Jason was terrified of starving. Even when he reached 400 pounds, when he could only wear t-shirts and shorts, when we stopped being able to drive places and could only make the short walks to the stores at the end of his street, when we lay in bed and he could only rest his arm on my shoulder for short periods of time before my thin skin would bruise. He would whisper it in my ear how the fear of being able to see his own skeleton under his skin consumed him.

He told me after the first time we had sex. The bed creaked and groaned as he shifted to his side. I was worried the wooden bed frame might collapse, but didn’t say anything, not wanting to ruin the moment. He leaned in, stroking my hair with one meaty hand that seemed to cover my whole head at once, and between gasps and pants filled silence with his fear of wasting away to nothingness. The heat of his breath, damp and heavy in my ear seemed to make the threat seem real.

Now the silence is filled with my wheezing breaths. I’m trying to convince myself that I think of this bed as a symbol of our passion, and not the place we came to so I could absorb his fears into mine. Instead, I’m focusing on the good moments, like when I first saw him and fell in love.

I had just moved to the city and still didn’t know anyone. When I first saw Jason I was eating alone in a small café, the kind with low lights and red wine walls, down the street from my office. I just happened to glance up to see the waiter bearing the most enormous dessert I’d ever seen.

A huge chocolate tower shot up half a foot in the air surrounded by mousse, scoops of ice cream and whipped cream with caramel and chocolate drizzled over the top. When I saw the waiter walking toward the six-person table, I thought they would be splitting the dish, but he set the plate in front of the man facing me, and despite my obviousness, I stared.

From that moment on, watching Jason eat became a fascination for me. Lying here, I can picture the motion of fork to mouth and the way he closed his eyes from enjoyment. I can even hear the almost imperceptible groans of delight he would sometimes emit. But I was never able to discover why watching him made me want to eat—the only time I ever wanted to. I think that might be what I will regret the most.

He caught my blatant ogling and winked at me once. I immediately put my head down and focused on rearranging the last few leaves of spinach on my plate. When the waitress came with the bill she also handed me a note that just said “7:00 a week from today.” That boldness. I never was able to wrap my head around that either.

We always went out to restaurants and the conversation was easy and light. We didn’t talk about food, but I told him all about my past and the small Ohio town I grew up in, and I loved the way he seemed to soak up everything I said. I listened to his jokes and watched him eat. We ran into someone he knew everywhere we went and he would introduce me as his beautiful girlfriend Jennifer. It was a role I could see myself playing.

Looking back, I never questioned anything. I didn’t find it strange that he introduced me to so many people, but we never spent time with anyone but each other.  When he told me that he’d seen a commercial for a charity to help starving children in Africa when he was four years old, I never wondered if this connection logically could cause his fear of starvation. I didn’t wonder if he was worried about me starving.

One night when we were lying in bed, close but not touching and I looked down at the bed to see that the mountain he created made the sheets into a tent of sorts, so that you couldn’t even see the small mound of my body. As if I wasn’t in the bed at all, but we were just one entity, one person, and I could pretend I was just like him, caring about life enough to fear something so unlikely to end it.

I never had to work so hard not to eat as when I was with him. When I was in junior high, a girl in my class was overweight, and the guys didn’t tease her much to her face, but I heard them talk about her. Heard them say that even if she lost weight, she was ruined forever. Speculate how someone could let herself become that disgusting. Say cankles were worse than having a million blackheads. They weren’t talking about me, but I didn’t want to be added to the black list for the rest of my life, so I convinced myself that food just didn’t taste. That it wasn’t necessary.

But Jason made food look like it could send you into a state of ecstasy that only drugs should reach. I think it must have been because he had that primal instinct of fear driving him. I’ve heard that people can lift cars in life-threatening situations with adrenaline rushing through their veins and I guess he had that on a smaller scale every time he ate. It’s strange that I have no feeling like that now. I’m sure that death is only a few hours away, but I can only think about the fact that I wish I’d told him I’d loved him more often.

I wish I’d told him that I was fascinated with the way he ate, that it never bothered me that he didn’t have the breath to have sex long enough for me to orgasm, or that I don’t care that he never asked what I’m afraid of.

I know I should be trying to summon forth that adrenaline, or at least try making a few last attempts to push his cold body off of me, but I can only think about how I can’t see any of my body. Now that I’m numb, I feel like our bodies have become one and I’ve disappeared into nothingness, just like I always wanted.