OCD Love Story Read online

  “Do you need a ride somewhere?” I say. Lisha will freak out at this story. Me and the mystery man from the Smith-Latin dance, posttherapy, flirting. Trying to. After Kurt dumped me, I said I wanted a guy with more problems than me so that he doesn’t think I’m totally nuts. Except I guess according to Beck he’s not really crazy. Maybe I should go for Rudy instead.

  I take that back in my head, just in case thinking it somehow makes it true.

  “Would you mind?” Beck says. “It’s not far.” He’s looking over his shoulder and I can’t imagine what he’s neurotically looking for until she pops into view: Dr. Pat. When he sees her, he gives her a quick wave and she smiles back, pleased, I think, at her patients’ posttherapy bonding. “Wait for her to leave,” Beck says, and he’s staring at the pavement, at the wheels of my car. Like Dr. Pat cares if I give him a ride home. But I do what he says anyway, whatever it takes for a few moments alone in the car, hopefully with him relaxing a bit. He’s like two different people—small and scared and sweet one moment and walled off and rude the next. But I have a feeling once we’re in the Volvo listening to the National and watching the gas hover between full and mostly full (the only two options in my car), he’ll be the sweet guy again.

  I hope.

  I’m hoping so hard, in fact, that I convince myself I can drive like a normal person for a few minutes, if it means seeing a little more of Beck. As long as he doesn’t live too far away and there aren’t any children or puppies running in the middle of the street, I should be okay.

  Dr. Pat drives off with another wave, and as soon as she’s out of sight Beck gets into my car. I slide off the hood and crawl into the driver’s seat.

  We wait for the car to heat up. He twists the hanging gold and green Mardi Gras beads around his fingers.

  It’s quiet, the waiting. Or we’re quiet. But it’s nice, sharing the same air, and we are both bundled up in coats and scarves and mittens and hats. My car’s small enough that it’s almost not awkward to share an armrest, which we do. Our big winter jackets touch but the sensation can’t get through all the layers to travel to my actual arm.

  “Your car fits you,” Beck says.

  “Oh God, I hope not,” I say, but I look over to see if he’s smiling or smirking. Dimples. Cartoon spark in his super-human blue eyes. It’s a compliment.

  “No, it’s cute. I like the way you are. I mean, your vibe. Your clothes and car and stuff,” Beck says. I try to remember what’s under all my winter layers: white leggings, short blue summer dress, thick white cardigan, fur vest to top it all off. “You’re all, you know, cool-seeming,” he concludes with an awkward, accidental squeak. I’m grinning like an idiot because there is nothing more charming than a boy tripping all over his words while trying to say something nice. I giggle, I mean literally giggle, and for maybe the first time ever feel lucky that it takes this long for my car to heat up in the winter.

  Beck shakes his head and blushes hard.

  “Don’t be embarrassed! That was nice,” I say. (Lisha’s voice in my head: People don’t like when you point out their every emotion. Lisha is the only person in the world who can give advice like that without it sounding mean.) “I mean, I like the way you are too.” Then we both just stare at the dashboard or out the window and I think I can hear, or maybe just feel the way his heartbeat is keeping pace with mine: loud and stubborn and fast as hell.

  He picks up the book of poems at his feet and flips through it. I try to forget that it was a gift from my ex, and that there are some notes about Kurt in there. In the margins. On the title page. On the back cover. The same kind of observations I sometimes write down about Austin and Sylvia. Nothing truly insane, but not the kind of thing I can explain quickly to Beck.

  “That’s not really mine,” I say, a weird half lie that I can’t explain. He sort of throws it out of his hands like he’s done something wrong, and it could not be more awkward in here. Thank God he hasn’t seen the other notebooks in the backseat: scrapbooks of newspaper articles, the pink starred notebook, the miniature one I just wrote about him in.

  Then there’s another sound interrupting our heartbeats. The heat turning on at last—a loud thunking and wobbling noise, the clicking and rustling like my vents are full of pebbles. The sounds my car makes are always vaguely discomforting.

  “Is your car safe?” Beck says.

  “Oh yeah. Just old.”

  “You know, its no big deal, I can totally just walk home.” It’s funny how quickly a particular energy can change because of stuff like noises or temperature shifts or a silence extending one second too long.

  “It’s a Volvo. It’s totally safe.” Beck nods. “Trust me. I’m pretty into safety. You’ll see.” It’s an effort, his agreement to stay in the car despite its rickety state and my possibly-crazy-person status and the encroaching sexual tension.

  Beck is sitting with such a straight back I wonder if he’s, like, a ballerina or something in his spare time, but then I realize no, he’s just in amazing shape and probably spends all his time on his body. He starts giving me directions, left here, right there. He is staring straight ahead but not holding on to the handle on the roof or anything. It’s more like he’s instructed his body to stay in place.

  “You drive slow,” he says.

  “Didn’t you learn defensive driving?” I try to smile through the sting of the observation.

  “No, it’s good. You’re a good driver.” Beck still isn’t looking at me when he speaks, but I look at him. Take my eyes off the road to glance at the perfect profile of his face. My heart catches in my chest when I realize how dangerous that just was. I slow down two more miles per hour and Beck leans his head against the seat back, like he is relaxing for the first time in hours.

  When we do our final turn we’re pulling into a twenty-four-hour gym, not his own personal driveway.

  “Oh,” I say. If there’s anything worse than enabling my own craziness, it’s enabling someone else’s.

  “I live near here. Told my parents group therapy was three hours, not one. They’re clueless.” I nod, but I can’t help the drop in my stomach. I thought we’d had a real moment, but maybe I’m just a way for him to go to the gym without getting in trouble. “Figured you’d understand . . . ,” Beck says. I nod again because he’s basically right. I’m already jumping five steps ahead of him to when I can do another drive-by of Austin’s place. So I’m certainly not any better than him and probably would do the same thing, given the opportunity.

  For instance, right now I’m considering bumming a cigarette from Sylvia in front of her building. You know, if she’s around.

  “Okay. I have to go in,” Beck says. “I’d hang out if I could, though. I just gotta get in there.”

  Before the disappointment has a chance to seep in, my mind clicks back to the half second that I let my mind and eyes wander to Beck’s face. We’re in a residential neighborhood and there was a car accident on one of these roads two months ago and focus is the number one most important thing to have when driving defensively.

  “Did you notice any kids earlier? When we were driving here?” I ask. But Beck’s already opening the car door and there’s an invisible, taut string between him and the gym. His fingers tap his thigh. “Sorry, sorry—go.”

  Beck’s finger taps a few times again. Pauses. More tapping. Pause.

  “Hey,” I say, “I get it, okay?” Finally he looks my way. The shape of his eyes changes, a little squint of recognition narrowing the corners.

  “You know,” he says, giving me a sheepish grin before shutting the door, “we’re the normal ones in that group, right?” His face comes a little closer to mine, and I can smell Dove soap and mint and fresh sweat. For a full six seconds I’m not thinking about anything but his eyes. “I mean, the girl with the hair?” he continues. “The guy with the scabs on his face?”

  God, I hope so, I think. His eyes are their very own Crayola color. Does he know that?

  I wonder if hanging out with
Beck will maybe only make me crazier.

  I wonder if these thoughts are, in and of themselves, driving me insane.

  I pinch the delicate inside of my wrist.

  “Sure, look at us!” I say with a grin. “Nothing too weird about us.”

  “Most people think I’m really healthy, you know? I mean, didn’t cleaning up and staying in shape used to be good things?” This is the second time I’ve heard him make this exact argument. I catch sight of Beck’s hands again and see they are not only dry from all the washing but also scraped up from the weightlifting. Ouch.

  “You’re kinda huge,” I say. The words are itching in my throat. If I don’t say what I’m thinking about I’ll explode. “I mean, in a good way. Not a fat way or whatever. Just—do you think your biceps are bigger than your head?” I’ve done pretty well, up until now, in terms of not saying every single thought that comes into my head. But I’m taking him in, all of him, and I’m terrified of what will happen if I don’t just say what I see in front of me. “Sorry,” I say. And then: “Can I touch your arm?” Beck doesn’t answer, so I think that’s a no. Or, if I’m lucky, he thought I was kidding.

  “I’m really not that big,” Beck says. But he is and it’s even more awkward when he’s sitting there denying it. “There’s way bigger guys in there.”

  “How many times a day do you work out?” I ask.

  “At the gym?”

  “Is there somewhere else you work out?”

  “I mean, we have some weights at home. And I go running sometimes. Maybe three or four times a day total?”

  I nod and try not to say it but: “That’s a lot. A lot.” And whatever spell we’ve been under that’s kept him in my car falls apart. Was it really just a few minutes ago that we were giving in to little bursts of puppy love?

  “Thanks for the lift,” Beck says. “Can you, like, not mention it to Dr. Pat?”

  I guess I knew he would say that. I could tell him how lying freaks me out, and that it seems unfair to lie about his weird habits when I don’t even really let myself lie about mine. But instead I shrug. Which isn’t a lie or a promise to lie, so it’s okay. It’s just a quick movement in my shoulders, almost like a shudder, like a quick chill of indecision. Beck nods and gets out of the car. He has a pocket-size notebook tucked into the back of his pants that I hadn’t noticed until this moment. I’m dying to know what he writes in there. I like that he has it, that he keeps some sort of record, that he too remains accountable for the things that happen around him.

  I smile and wave and he gives enough of a smile back that I think . . . maybe.

  And that’s it; he’s gone.

  • • •

  I’ve got about a million missed calls from Lisha that I don’t see until Beck is all the way inside the crazy-big gym. He’s right about one thing: There are definitely guys much bigger than him strutting up to the doors, guys with arms so big they don’t swing at their sides but hover almost parallel to the ground.

  I don’t want Beck to end up looking that way. I like his body now: the slightly off proportions of muscles to height. Meanwhile, if Austin were here, he’d stand out against the tightly wound wide bodies. His legs are skinny, his waist smaller than mine, his hair too floppy for a proper workout. For a split second I think I see Austin, but it’s a soccer mom with a short haircut and no breasts.

  It’s a relief to drive away, back to the place on the road where I glanced at Beck. I pull over to take a quick look around, make sure nothing terrible happened while I was trying to reimagine the feel of Beck’s lips on mine. No signs of catastrophe, so I take a moment to listen to my voice mail.

  “Bea, it’s Lish. Where are you? Are we meeting up?”

  “Bea, it’s Lish. What time is your group over? I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t go to that guy’s house . . . ”

  I’m already regretting telling her I wanted to go to Austin’s place tonight, but she’d asked what I was thinking, and it felt like my throat was swelling up when I didn’t answer right away.

  “Bea, it’s Lish. My parents are being freaks. Did you see the Beck guy? Was it awkward?”

  “Bea. It’s Lish. Okay, we can go check out this guy’s apartment, but it’s on the record that I think it’s kiiiiinda a bad idea.”

  I laugh, an awkward sound when you’re alone on the side of the road.

  I almost call back to tell her about Beck, but I can’t figure out the right words to say. He used me to go to the gym. We’re not even friends. We barely spoke. We are co-patients, and I’m, like, a chauffeur and an enabler. But that’s it. There’s nothing romantic in any of that.

  Except, of course, for the way it feels to be around him. That part is romantic.

  I get back in my car and wait a long, long time before getting back on the road. I hate merging, and there’s a veritable parade of cars passing by. Cars with children in them. Cars driven by sweet little old grandmothers. My driving instructor always told me to trust myself, but the thing is . . . how?

  So I sit there as the cars drive by one by one, and I savor the last few moments of total safety.

  I breathe, like Dr. Pat tells me to do. I probably shouldn’t spend any more time in the car today. But if I don’t drive by Austin’s place, he might vanish. Into thin air or a hospital or a foreign country, I’m not sure. I need to write something in my pink notebook and tomorrow is so far away, it might not ever happen.

  If I don’t check on Austin, I might vanish.

  Poof.

  BECAUSE SHE’S CALLED SO MANY times and because I need to interact with a normal human being for at least a few minutes every day, I decide not to cancel on Lisha, and I drive to her house. She’s that perfect kind of friend who’s always home and available because she has no other friends.

  Cooter is in the driveway shooting hoops. He makes me nervous; his face focusing on the hoop spurs the edge of a memory I don’t want to think about. We used to play H-O-R-S-E out here: me, Cooter, Lisha, and Jeff. Jeff of the ratty Dr Pepper T-shirt and sneakers colored in with a Sharpie. Jeff with the shaggy, Austin-like hair and the lips that kissed with pressure, opening a little but not searching. Jeff, who was the first guy to call me pretty, and for all the wonder of that tiny moment, I get a gasp of bile in my mouth at the thought of him.

  Jeff isn’t around anymore. He’s not dead or anything, but he’s gone.

  Cooter dribbles and passes the ball to me without warning. It hits me in the stomach, and I let out a hiccup of surprise.

  “Look alive,” he says with a smirk, and I know I’m supposed to grin back and push the ball into his chest and wave my arms in his face, which is the only part of defense I ever understood. I haven’t touched a ball since Jeff left, and with my mouth open and the ball at my feet Cooter realizes his mistake. “You okay?” he says. Doesn’t come to put a hand on my shoulder or anything, but looks like he really cares.

  “Yeah, sorry, been awhile. Guess my athletic days are over,” I say with the lamest laugh, the kind that is basically just an exhalation of breath. In trying to remember nothing, I remember everything: Jeff’s long, skinny arms moving gracefully and his clown feet dancing around me. The flash of his neon-dyed hair making me flutter inside. The way he’d grab me by the waist when I’d get the ball, lifting me up to the basket, and the whooping as I made a slam dunk.

  It hurts my heart, and my mouth goes dry at the memory. I pinch my thigh and let myself in to the house without another word. It’s not so hard to run past Lisha’s parents and their awkward small talk. They’re not exactly outgoing, so they call out to me in small silky voices and if I just wave exuberantly and smile wide, they’re satisfied. When I get to her room, Lish is fixing a tie around her neck (must be an old-school boy’s uniform) but is otherwise innocuous. Her blond hair hits that vague place between her shoulders and her collarbone and she’s wearing enough makeup to smooth out her skin and add a little push to her eyes, making the brown pop under mascara-ed lashes. But it’s all to make her blend in, not
stand out. The tie (navy, skinny, loosely knotted) is a sort of sad attempt to be noticed.

  I smile anyway.

  “You’re all put together!” I say, and check myself out in her mirror to see how we fit (or don’t fit) together. I’m all glittering eyeshadow, and the layer upon layer of dress-cardigan-vest is dancing on that line between homeless and hot. Sort of inspired by Sylvia’s overdone celebrity style. No wonder I’m totally scaring off Beck.

  But I do want to be a costume designer someday, so at least I’m succeeding there. See, it’s not all obsession and stalking. Some of it is run-of-the-mill dedication to my craft. Maybe Sylvia is just my costume-designing muse.

  “You’re really late,” Lisha says. She’s at her desk, which is made for a child, not a near adult, and she’s doing homework for some stupid class that I’m sure she’s acing anyway.

  “You know how it is,” I say.

  “No. I don’t. Was it group therapy? What was it like? Was the girl with no hair there? Did you and Beck talk?”

  Lisha needs a television. Or another friend.

  “Did you already go by that apartment? Of that guy? What’s his name?”

  “Austin,” I say, but I’d rather have kept it to myself. “Haven’t been yet, so let’s do it.”

  “I think it’s a bad idea,” Lisha says. I notice she has a pair of scissors out on her desk. Professional-looking in their sharpness. I almost tell her to put them in a drawer where they can’t hurt anyone, but the words sound weird even in my head. Still, I can’t seem to get my eyes off of them.

  “You will love their building. It’s, like, from the future. And they are totally fabulous,” I say, happy to talk about Austin and Sylvia and drag my mind kicking and screaming from those scissors and their sharpness. “It will be an adventure, I swear. We can get Starbucks on the way.” I know if I can at least get her moving, then I’ll be able to answer whatever questions she comes up with later.

  “Getting in your car and letting you buy me a mocha does not mean I’m committing to going the whole way there,” she says. I roll my eyes. She’s frowning but getting her coat and mittens on at least, and it’s a good thing, ’cause my heart is racing. My mind can’t seem to decide between thinking of Beck and thinking of Austin. It’s all wound up together. But at least they both distract me from thinking about Jeff. “He’s like, hot, right?” Lisha says. “Hot and old?”