Page 35 of Call You Mine
Luckily, the bathroom door opens, causing him to turn and hopefully forget what he saw—me, frozen in my own body, aside from my hands opening and closing.
I’ve only ever shared my compulsions with Rumi and Emerson.
Emerson knows that keeping the place in a certain type of order is more than just a quirk of mine, and she’s never made me feel silly or stupid about it—she even tries her best to remember exactly how I like things cleaned or put back after they’ve been used.
Neither of my best friends know how bad my compulsions have gotten since the fire.
Only my therapist knows.
But Dr. Abbiedoesn’tknow how much I want to throw something at her when she reminds me about Exposure and Response therapy for my OCD—all for the purpose ofchoosingto prevent my response to my triggers.
As if any of my compulsions were a choice.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
The burn in my lungs subsides, and I take in a full breath, just as Georgie comes out of the bathroom, her hair damp and her cheeks rosy from the hot water, a huge yawn taking over her face.
Her mouth closes, and her eyes move in our direction. She stops mid-step. “What?”
That’s when I realize both Anderson and I are looking her way but not saying anything.
“Oh, nothing.” I sit down in the chair next to Anderson’s. “Goodnight,” I add, but the lightness of my voice hurts my ears. It sounds too forced, and I resist the urge to outwardly cringe.
Anderson clears his throat. “Goodnight, Georgie. It wasnice to finally meet you.” He offers Georgie that easy-going smile, the one that can put anyone at ease.
Her rosy cheeks pinken a little more, and her blush is almost as cute as Anderson’s.
“Goodnight,” she mumbles with a mix of embarrassment and annoyance, the way teenagers do, before walking across the living room toward my bedroom.
When the door closes behind her, I turn back to Anderson, taking back control of the conversation. “What about your family?”
Anderson sighs. “My brothers might be a little upset that I didn’t tell them, my mom, too, but it won’t last long.” He lets out a laugh, but I didn’t think he said anything funny.
“Why not?” The question surprises us both. I don’t know if I should care why he seems to be laughing at the thought of his family not caring much about him not telling them he was in a relationship, one serious enough to get married—I shouldn’t. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I quickly add, making it worse.
He runs a hand through his hair—something he’s done a few times tonight. “They’ll realize they didn’t know because they either didn’t remember to ask me about what was going on in my life, or they asked and forgot what I told them.”
A wave of protectiveness hits me like the tide, and I have to resist the urge to let the undertow pull me in. I don’t know why, but it pisses me off that Anderson doesn’t have a family that asks about him, especially when he is like sunshine after days of cloudy skies.
Sunshine thatanyonewould be lucky to bask in.
“That’s shitty.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “It doesn’t bother me.”
Yet, something tells me it does.
That same look before passes over his face—I thought it was pity before, but it's something I can’t quite put my finger on.
“What about our friends?” I ask, changing the subject as I tear my eyes from him and down to my fingers interlocked with each other on my lap.
Anderson purses his lips. “We could go the whole ‘we were secretly actually dating this whole time’ route.” He puts his elbow on the counter, leaning into his hand.
“Well, Rumi and Emerson do know that we’ve been seeing each other on and off,” I pause, thinking of my two best friends, and how I hate the thought of lying to them. They’ve been asking me for months what exactly Anderson and I are—if we’re together or not, and I never knew how to tell them the truth.
My nights with Anderson became like my own addiction—needing to get my fix no matter how much harder it would be to quit when I come down from the high.
It’s a relationship only in the physical sense—no feelings.
