OCD Love Story (27 page)

Not strong enough. Beck grabs his own arms; it's awkward the way they fit, crossing his Superman-style chest. Everything is too built up, out of proportion. I want to hug him. I want to nestle into him and let him know he doesn't have to be that strong.

Even though that's part of what makes me like him.

Maybe more. Maybe love him.

He tears up. It's so beautiful in those blue eyes, I'm out of breath just looking at him. I'm not thinking of anything else but how badly I want to let him know it's okay.

“Violet. Her name was Violet,” he says at last. We all nod and I break the rules and wrap myself around him. Dr. Pat looks away, like if she doesn't see it, it doesn't count. The rest of them look away too.

Beck's lips hit the space where my neck meets my shoulder.
And I know he's getting better. I know he's doing something big and real.

And I know that I'm somewhere far behind.

• • •

What comes next is the fifth date.

We stay on the mountain after therapy is over. Fawn, Rudy, Jenny, and Dr. Pat climb down when the ninety minutes are up, but Beck asks me to stay with him. Dr. Pat lets us hang on to her picnic blanket and we both lie down on it, side by side. I think, from the flash I catch of Dr. Pat's face before she leads the rest of the pack down the mountain, that she is a romantic at heart. Under the oversize glasses and probing questions, she's still someone who likes seeing two people fall in love.

I know that's what we're doing as soon as we're alone and Beck takes my hand and pulls me into him so that I can find a space for my head on his chest.

“Violet's a pretty name,” I say. I've never known someone with a dead sister. I've never known someone who's drowned. It's not the kind of thing I'm interested in researching. Drowning isn't usually something a person does to another person. Drowning is a different kind of accident and it's not part of my OCD repertoire. So there's nothing to distract me from listening to him talk about her. I don't compulse, thinking about how sad it is. I just let it be sad.

My heart's banging around my chest, but not with the
worry about accidental drowning. And there's nothing sexy about this kind of tragedy, but that doesn't stop Beck from pulling me on top of him. The kissing is profound. Deep and unrestrained in a way it never has been with him before.

And the touching.

He's not pulling back from me. Something about hugging that tree and laughing it out and speaking aloud his sister's name seems to have changed him. Or at least has made him want me more. Because in a moment his hands are sliding down, underneath my pants, and we're taking our clothes off, and maybe someone could come by at any minute, but I don't think we care.

Which is saying a lot. We have OCD. We care about
everything
.

• • •

I don't know that I'd ever wanted to have sex before Beck. Not that I hadn't said yes to other guys, because I had, but it had always been a passive choice. A kind of giving in to something, or a not needing to make a big deal about something. But with Beck right now, on the picnic blanket with the threat of random dog-walking or outdoors-loving strangers hiking by, I want him. And what we do there is a little bit illicit, it being outside and all, but mostly it's just sweet and good and surprisingly real.

Beck strokes my hair afterward. Twirls it in his fingers. Sighs out a single syllable “wow.”

“I think I love you,” he says. “I don't know much about you. But you make me feel calm. You make me feel like it's okay.”

“Like what's okay?”

“Pretty much everything,” he says. “Is that weird? Is that okay?”

“Yes to both,” I say, and lift my head to kiss him.

• • •

We hold hands the whole walk back down the trail. Now that late afternoon is hitting, normal March temperatures seem to be taking over and I think by tonight it will be almost winter again. Like what happened up there this afternoon was an almost impossibly perfect thing: warm and sun-hit and captured in that one unlikely moment.

THERE WAS AN INCIDENT LAST
year. it's not like they gave me an official restraining order or anything. There was just some legal jargon and a strong talking-to and some extra sessions with Dr. Pat and an evaluation with another psychiatrist who looked like Mr. Potato Head. A couple lawyers. A few papers. They put me on some extra Zoloft and called it a day, basically. It wasn't some huge thing.

Dr. Pat said I was lucky that Kurt, that guy who dumped me, was keeping the whole thing totally private. She said I was lucky I went to an all girls' school where I couldn't get myself into any real trouble on a regular basis.

I don't think my obsession with Austin is quite as “lucky.”

People are starting to know,
I think.
Someone's told Dr. Pat everything,
I think.
“Someone” might be Beck,
I think.

Because today Dr. Pat says it's time for me to open up to the group about the things my compulsions have driven me to do.

It pisses me off more than usual because I am supposed to be enjoying my extralong, private-school-size vacation and
this is starting to feel like the exact opposite of a holiday. Kim and Lacey and girls like them are in transit, right now, flying to Florida and Mexico with their families, and all I wanted was a morning off from my illness to lie in bed and think about Beck's arms and count the places he's touched me.

But.

I'm still in a love and sex haze from my time outside with Beck, so maybe she's right and maybe it's the perfect day to get this over with. Beck's not in group. Beck has not called me. Neither has Lisha. I texted her to tell her on Saturday about being with Beck on the mountain, hoping it would smooth things over, but all she said was
Omg. Scandal.
I wish we were in school so that she'd have to see me and talk to me, but no such luck. And so far there's been no follow-up phone call or Pancake House date. We're speaking, I guess, so that's good. But just barely.

Between no Beck and no Lisha, it seems everything's come to a screeching halt, and I'm letting it crash and burn. Just like that. The silence in the car Saturday afternoon as Beck drove me home had the blissful decadence of sleeping until noon or eating in bed. It was that comfortable, that delicious. I was so certain in what we had on the mountain and fell asleep the moment I got home

Except: The silence from the car has continued for a few days, and now the silence doesn't feel so sleepy and comfortable and worn in anymore. I'm squirming in it.

If I'm going to speak, it's got to be now, in the safety of his absence. Okay. Caution to the wind or whatever. If Beck's going to get better, I'm going to need to get better too, and according to Dr. Pat, the only way to do that is to be honest.

Historically speaking, I'm all about the honesty, right? So this shouldn't be too hard.

“I get sort of overly invested in certain people,” I say to start. I focus on Jenny, who is sporting a turban today. “One of my compulsions is weird . . . it's these people—just strangers mostly—I get scared they'll get hurt or disappear and that if I don't do a certain ritual of checking up on them then a terrible thing will happen.” Nods all around. Rudy, Jenny, and Fawn do similar stuff: They check on locked doors and weather reports and the cleanliness of their hands. I just check on people.

“You know when you're a kid and you do those Magic Eye things? You stare at something and see just a big mess, but then you look for a little longer, and a clear, unrelated image pops into view? Those things always really disoriented me. Because that must mean something, right? It's this hidden message and we're all using it for our enjoyment but . . . no. It's not like that. It's more like ink blots? That psychiatrists in old movies have?” I heave out a sigh. Explaining the logic of something I know is crazy to a room full of people I know are crazy is singularly exhausting.

Dr. Pat nods at me to keep going and I shift my focus
mostly to Fawn since she's the most harmless person here. She keeps adjusting her chair to line it up with some invisible blueprint we can't see. But otherwise she's simply listening and looking sad. She has an always-sad kind of face though, so I don't take it personally.

“The inkblots. You see something in them. It pops out at you. And it's something bigger than it was. The fact that I'd see a cloud and Fawn would see a . . . a . . . puppy . . . it matters, right? Anyway, I guess I feel like the whole world is like that for me.”

“Prep school asshole,” Rudy says. I don't know what that means because I didn't say anything about prep school. And though I upgraded my outfit from Saturday's hiking ensemble, I'm still pretty innocuous in old jeans and a blazer my mom used to wear in the eighties. I have on bright yellow hoop earrings and sweater boots.

“Rudy, we can talk about your feelings later. But Bea is allowed to express herself however she's comfortable,” Dr. Pat says with what I think has got to be an internal eye roll.

“I
feel
like Bea is a show-off, and I hate girls that go to Greenough, and I'm not in therapy to get some lecture on inkblots and their deeper meanings.” Dr. Pat gives Rudy another glare since the first one obviously wasn't enough. He continues. “I'm just saying it's rude to talk down to us, you know? Sorry we can't all afford fancy private schools or whatever.”

“There's a real danger to judging someone based on their
external circumstances. As I think we all know,” Dr. Pat says. I hate when she uses “we” when she really means “you crazies.”

“That's really all I had to say anyway, Rudy, so chill,” I say. I think it's the first time I've spoken directly to him. He stares back. The gruesome scars on his face seem almost purposeful in moments like this. Like he's using them to be aggressive and intimidating. It works. “So, yeah,” I conclude. The awkward silence is totally begging for a fight, but I can't muster up much attitude. “Chill out.”

“How about you explain what you mean about the inkblots and how they are like life?” Dr. Pat says. I'd hoped we could let go of the inkblots, but I can't think of another great way to explain.

“The people I get . . . obsessed with. They pop out from everyday life. And I don't know why, but it's, like, I see a hundred people a day and then one day,
bam
, I'll see some guy and there's more to him. He's not just an inkblot, he's a cloud or a puppy or whatever, and then I know that the way he pops out at me must mean I am connected to him in some way and then I absolutely have to check on him over and over.”

“But it's always guys?” Jenny says. “You always are getting obsessed with random strange guys?”

And that, of course, is when Beck walks in.

Vulnerable isn't the word for it. This is something else. Exposed.

“I guess it's been only guys, yeah,” I say. Beck's in clean gym clothes but he looks worn out and winded, like he's coming from some epic workout, which he probably has.

“I lost track of time,” he says with his face down. Dr. Pat's mouth stays in a straight line and she nods but doesn't tell him it's okay and doesn't admonish him either. I can't find a way out of finishing this conversation now that he's here. I've waded so far into the crappy shark-infested waters that I can't make my way back out.

“So you're a stalker,” Rudy says.

“Excuse me—have you seen yourself?” I say. It's not any sort of planned assault on Rudy. But once I open the door just that little bit, I lose all control. Because he's sitting there with scabs on his face and his arms crossed and making
tick tick tick
noises every time he hears words that begin with the letters
B
or
P
, but he has a look on his face like
I'm
the really crazy one. “I mean, honestly, look in the fucking mirror. Yes, okay? I get a little fixated on stuff. It's a fucking OCD group. What did you expect? But don't throw words around like . . . like . . .
‘stalker,'
and then expect me not to describe you as an ugly weirdo.”

Dr. Pat is squirming. That's new. It sort of takes my breath away: the humanity of the person I've come to think of as unable to be moved in any way. She buries her face in her notebook like she has to hide whatever feelings are most certainly leaping across the edges of her lips, the wrinkles in
her forehead, the crinkle of a nose, or the roll of her eyes.

“Bea . . . ,” Beck says, mostly under his breath. He looks almost guilty, like he did this.

Dr. Pat breaks in before I have a chance to say anything else terrible. “Well. So. Though I'd urge everyone to get away from words like ‘ugly' and ‘weird,' I also think Bea is doing some important work here.” There is no protocol for this particular moment. It's written all over her face. Dr. Pat is going rogue. She clears her throat. Squirms again. We are all rapt. “So Bea, Rudy, I appreciate you getting in touch with your feelings and I applaud that. And it requires honesty to work on our compulsions together. Excuse me. Your compulsions. Everyone's compulsions. You know, can we take a bathroom break?”