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Instead, she’d braved the feral cats on the roof and brought her decorations downstairs.
Not even the wild animals would give her the time of day though.
She’d set up her tree, tried to get in the holiday spirit with some Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Until they were drowned out by the evil banjo demons across the hall.
By the way, they had been playing formonths.She was starting to think they weren’t eventryingto get better. She was convinced that theylikedhow badly they played.
About the time she finished the first bottle of wine she switched her playlist to Islandic Death Metal and opened the door so as to better flood the hallway with noise.
Dave never called her back.
And now it was Christmas Eve.
And it was just her and her brother.
Eating cookies and frosting out of the bowl.
She’d tried to act like she was fine. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Dave being all alone across town. That’s not how it should be.
“I know I’m not great at the comforting, that’s really Kara’s territory. But do you want to talk about what happened?” André asked carefully.
What happened indeed.
Maybe this would be good. She could talk about it out loud and see if she was really as fucked as it felt like. In fact, André might have some insight into it that she hadn’t considered. Maybe he could give her an idea she hadn’t tried yet. Because she was one more glass of pink wine away from trying to climb the side of the building into Dave’s apartment. Where she would undoubtedly be arrested.
Sabine refilled her glass and braced her back on the counter. “Okay. Some pertinent information. He has predominantly inattentive ADHD.”
André’s expression turned thoughtful and he came around the island to get himself a wine glass.
“Which, when he told me, I wasn’t surprised or anything. It made sense. But he’s…sensitive about it.”
André poured a glass and nodded his head. He crossed one arm over his middle and mirrored her posture.
She blinked as the details surrounding her time with Dave started to swirl together in her mind. Some things created more questions while others dismissed earlier concerns.
“Like,” she said, trying to grasp at some of the things that moved too fast for her to catch. “He told me he didn’t graduate high school, and asked me to help him get his GED, and then every time I brought it up again, he changed the subject.” She frowned at her brother.
“Did he feel embarrassed maybe?” André asked.
She shrugged. “I mean, yeah. But when I realized he didn’t want to talk about it anymore I stopped asking. And then…” She sighed, took a long drink of her wine and set the glass on the counter. “Okay, so he has this friend, you’ve met him. Max.”
André nodded his head.
“Max has made these, um, these binders for Dave. They’re fantastic. Truly. Dre, you don’t even know. I wish I could show you because it would blow your mind. But these binders are full of all the information that Dave needs to do daily tasks. Like, the one I saw in the kitchen had photos of what the cupboards look like when everything is put away. A photo of the inside of the refrigerator. A photo of the kitchen as a whole. It’s like Pinterest but in a three-ring binder.” Her voice got louder and faster as she spoke, because the binder was fucking brilliant. “And then there’s a laminated checklist. Like put away milk, dishes in dishwasher, things like that. And there are different tasks for different days. Like Monday, take out the trash, Tuesday, refill the water filter.” She stopped, her heart pounding as she thought about how incredible the binder was.
“And I’m pretty sure he has a binder for every room. There’s probably one in his car too.”
André’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a really good idea. I have a few students who could benefit from something like that.”
“Right?” Sabine declared. “That’s what I was thinking. I mean, I know that the executive functions in an ADHD brain don’t allow for them to picture what ‘done’ looks like. And I can read about it and study it all the live long day, but I only have apieceof what he deals with. I can do my best to understand but he is so very aware of how he’s different. He lives in a neurotypical world and he’s doing his best to fit in but…” She huffed a laugh and her heart tightened. “He’s so amazing when he doesn’t fit. And he has no idea.”
“So what happened?”
She dropped her head back and groaned.
“I saw the binders before he was ready to show me. Max invited me up to his condo to get something and Dave walked in and thought the worst.”
“The worst? What? Like you and Max were…” He made a face.
