He looks up and I see the pain in his eyes, the way it stretches across his face, dimpling the skin on his forehead and dragging down the edges of his lips.
“Remembered why this can’t be real.”
He shrugs my hand off gently and shifts backward, giving us some space so that his words don’t cut off our air.
He’s right, of course, and deep down I know that I shouldn’t be hurt by those words. We know that things could never be real between us. There’s too much at stake—Wren, Finn’s family…and our friends. Besides, I made a promise to myself, and I need to keep it. I used to think that the world only sent me bad men, that at some point in my life I had done something to warrant such a punishment. Now, seeing the way that Finn treats me and the implications he’s making, I’m starting to think that maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I turn them into bad men, and if that’s the case then it really is best for Finn not to date me for real, because during our time together, I’ve realized that I don’t think I ever believed Finn to be a bad person.
He shakes himself off abruptly and when he looks at me again, this time it’s as if nothing happened. His smile is kind, his eyes honest. He’s just Finn.
“And to answer your question, my compulsions really are mostly caused by stress.”
He takes a few calming breaths, each exhale bringing his shoulders further and further from his ears. When he looks over and sees my concerned expression, he elaborates. “It’s more of a natural occurrence. Mostly happens when I need to have any sort of confidence in anything. Well, that and hygiene…or safety.”
I take in his words while I refill both of our glasses. “Do you have any plans to continue with therapy?”
“Eventually.” He nods. “My therapist has let me know that he’s back at work, so I will start seeing him again. There’s just a lot going on at the moment.”
He takes out a container of cherries and places it between us. “Besides, I go to him for maintenance. I’m not looking for an antidote, just a way to control it.”
“You know, when we were younger, right after you went off to college, I researched OCD.” When I see his surprise, I explain. “I wanted to know. I was curious. When I was reading, I saw that a mixture of therapy and SSRIs gets you as close as you can get to curing it.”
Finn immediately stops chewing the cherry in his mouth. “But I just said that I wasn’t?—”
“No, I know.” My head tilts. “But wouldn’t you want to fix it if you could?”
“What?” he asks.
“I just mean that…um…I don’t know, don’t people prefer to cure things like this?”
“Cure.”
“Well, maybe not cure, but remedy it?”
“Remedy it.”
Every time he speaks, it’s like an echo, a voice of disbelief that makes me slowly regret every word I’m saying.
“Finn, I don’t mean to imply that you’re?—”
“That I’m what, Oakleigh? Huh? That I’mbroken?”
“No!” I answer quickly, moving to sit on my heels so I’m facing him as I hold my hands out in an attempt to steady this shaky conversation. “Finn, I know you’re not. When I said cure it, I only meant?—”
“What, you think that I haven’ttried?”
I’m thrown off, lost for words. His voice rises in volume with each word, and even though he doesn’t sound angry per se, he for sure sounds tired.
“You think I haven’t tried to be out from under the control of my own fractured thoughts? I go to therapy to be better, to feel better, but what you seem to be missing is that it’s a disorder, Oakleigh, not a defect. I still work just fine.”
I just stare, my eyes stinging with unshed tears that make me turn away before he sees.
“You’ve known me for fifteen years, Oakleigh, and you still don’t know anything about my OCD or how I feel about it. You’ve never even fucking asked. So, please don’t come and offer advice about something that Google told you how to feel about it.”
I stare straight ahead as I nod stiffly. Finn stands up and paces the length of the barn, pent up emotions and energy leaking from him in a way that I just can’t watch.
“I try so hard, Oakleigh, so fucking hard to protect everyone. To protect them from the effects that this could have on them. Onyou. I knew that you hating me would be better than you liking me in any way, because you would be spared the burden of my troubles. I’ve made sure that I am perfect in everything, because one mistake and I lose my worth. My usefulness equals my worth, Oakleigh, don’t you see that? And I can’t be useful while I’m not in therapy, yes, true, but that doesn’t mean that I’m completely written off. Broken, maybe, but not fucking pointless. I’m not your project to fix, okay?”
I don’t open my mouth. I don’t take a second to tell him that he’s contradicting himself, moving from defending himself to dragging himself down like a confused pendulum. My heart thumps against my chest so hard, it feels like it might stretch the skin and burst out. He watches me as if he can’t believe he’s just done that. Shock fills every crevice of his being and mine. What surprises me most, is the fact that his eyes are full of unshed tears threatening to escape.
