OCD Love Story

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “Hang on to this?” I say.

  “Taking notes tonight?”

  “I’m hoping not to, but just in case,” I mumble at the ground. It would be impossible to miss her eyes rolling, her minisigh. She takes it though, packs it into that enormous purse, and doesn’t say another word about it.

  “You look great,” Beck says to me, when we meet up outside The Middle East. Lisha: stockingless, cold. Purple eyeshadow and red, red lips. Me: red skinny jeans and a cut-up navy Red Sox tee, which I repurposed using child’s scissors. The edges are jagged, but I looped silver ribbons at the shoulders and bedazzled the seam that runs down my torso on each side.

  We haven’t spoken about what happened at her dance recital, but after our few strained texts about me sleeping with Beck, she said she wanted to come to the concert and she half apologized for her behavior the other night on our drive here. She did not, however, ask me for specifics. We didn’t giggle about how it felt or what he did or how many rocks dug into my spine that afternoon. I guess I don’t expect much, now that I know how truly insane I actually am. I’m now that person she lies about; I’m that secret friend that every Harvard-bound skinny nerd has to have.

  “You made it,” Lisha says to Beck, distinctly not as an exclamation.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Beck says. I stand by and swallow a lot and hope that Lisha will more or less keep her mouth shut. It’s the first time I’ve ever wished she knew less about me. I’m wanting (badly, lately) to erase our intimacy. I grab Beck’s hand and not hers and try to remember why I said she could come.

  We find a table up front and order coffees and don’t really speak. When Austin and Sylvia don’t get on stage immediately, I remember why I’m making Lisha tag along. So I don’t do anything truly stupid. I’m going to be with Austin and Beck in the same room. I have no idea what might happen. She’s chaperoning my date. (Sixth date, but who’s keeping track?) A whole pile of feelings go right to my chest and nestle in there.

  None of us speak. Beck tries to avoid glancing at Lisha’s not-chest and I try to access that feeling I had the other night with Dr. Pat, breathing into the anxiety, riding it out until it fades into something silly and small. But I can’t seem to make Austin and Sylvia silly and small.

  “So,” Lisha says at Beck. There’s a mean look to her tonight, but maybe it’s just the makeup. More likely, it’s the booze. Lisha and her unexpected alcohol-induced meanness. “You like Dr. Pat? ’Cause I feel like she’s my ally, you know? When Bea talks about her I always feel like . . . someone’s finally taking my side in all of this.”

  She can’t have had more than half a juice bottle of weak, childish cocktail, but here she is, being the exact opposite of a useful chaperone.

  “Lish, can we not?” I try. I don’t know what I pictured for tonight. Some teen movie version of friendship where me, Beck, and Lisha drink tea and lattes and sneak sips of alcohol and manage to not puke up that terrible combination and also manage to laugh at each other’s jokes and have the lovely sort of night they have on the Disney channel. For once in my life I want life to be more like the Disney channel.

  “I just mean, you know, finally I have this person in authority seeing things my way, you know? I trust that woman, I’ll tell you that much. I trust the shit out of her. Have for the last few years. She’s going to bring my friend back, you know? You know what I mean, Beck?”

  Beck shrugs and gives the weakest kind of smile before excusing himself to go to the bathroom. The goal is only two times on the whole date, so this isn’t a good start.

  “Are we in a fight? And if we are, shouldn’t it be me mad at you?” I say. “I seem to remember you hiding me and Beck from your stupid ballerina—”

  “Small price to pay,” Lisha says.

  I wonder if she’s been like this all along. It seems like she must have been, like this twist in her personality can’t possibly be coming on as quickly as it’s seeming.

  “Seriously, leave if you don’t want to be here,” I say. I so badly want Beck to come back to the table, but a minute and then two and then three tick by and I think there’s no way he’s coming out before eight minutes is up.

  Which more or less means I’m destroying him. Or me and Lisha are. Either way, this isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned love to be. Ruinous. Destructive and selfish. Four minutes have passed.

  “How do you feel about Beck and Austin being in the same room at the same time?” Lisha says.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Come on, your boyfriend’s got what? Another like five minutes until he’s coming back out? Spill.” It’s funny the effect wearing a corset can have on an otherwise totally normal girl. Lish is all attitude. She keeps crossing and recrossing her legs the way people do when they think they’re hot shit. I say as much, and Lisha practically stabs me with her eyes.

  “This was a terrible idea,” I say.

  “Agreed.”

  “What are you even doing here? Are, like, the police coming to raid this place after getting a tip from you? Are you hoping me and Beck get dragged away in straitjackets?” I don’t even know where these words are coming from, but Dr. Pat said this might happen.

  “When you start letting go of your tightly wound way of life, of the things that keep you feeling safe, new feelings will come up,” she told the group when Jenny had gone three whole days without pulling out a single hair but had also written hate e-mails to an ex-boyfriend. Dr. Pat called it a step toward healing.

  “I want the exact opposite of that,” Lisha says. “I want the exact opposite of you in a straitjacket.” And Beck comes out before I can ask what that means.

  “Don’t worry,” Beck says. “Wanted to wait the eight minutes, but I made it out in seven.” He winks and kisses the top of my head like we’ve been doing this forever.

  “You’re kicking ass,” I say.

  We missed the opener, so the crowd is gearing up for Tryst and I’m sweating bullets with anticipation.

  “Are Sylvia and Austin Dr. Pat’s only famous clients?” Lisha says. She looks so strange in her stripper getup. I’m pleased to have a T-shirt and yellow duck rainboots pulled over my skinny jeans. We’re not attracting any attention either way. In this crowd—mostly college kids and a few tired-looking thirty-somethings scattered along the edges so they can keep getting their glasses of wine refilled—Lish, Beck, and I pull off a certain kind of normal.

  I work hard to look like I’m taking the crowd in while Beck registers the last fucked-up thing Lisha said.

  I hope that maybe if I’m quiet and distracted enough the moment will vanish and become something else.

  Presto-change-o.

  No such luck.

  “The people in the band . . . they go to Dr. Pat?” Beck says, like if he turns Lisha’s sentence around just a little bit it will mean something different.

  Lisha feigns innocence. She makes her eyes wide and looks from me to Beck and then back to me again.

  “Yeah,” I say. Because really, what else do you say?

  “Your favorite band goes to Dr. Pat?” Beck says. I’m familiar with what he’s doing and it’s not going to end up well for him: He’s trying to make the very basic and obvious facts of the situation not mean what he most fears they mean. He is trying to see any possible scenario aside from the truth. But he’s about to get hit with it hard.

  “They’re not really my favorite band. I mean, I like them, but I only just started listening to—”

  The lights shift. On cue, the crowd does too. Kids who were hanging to the sides or in the back rush the stage. Roadies adjust instruments and there’s a heated, sweaty smell of anticipation hanging over us. Lisha leaves the table to join the thick of the crowd but I keep Beck away from the densest part of the audience, hovering over the table with me instead. That way I can see Austin better and feel like Beck’s not going to have some germ-related panic attack.

  “Up next: Tryst!” a tech guy yells into the microphone, and there’s a shuff
le of laughter and discomfort like he’s never heard his own voice over the loudspeakers before. There’re maybe a hundred people stacked in here, one on top of the other, but it’s not too loud yet so I’ve got to get this conversation over with before the music starts.

  “So they’re patients. Sylvia and Austin . . . oh my God,” Beck says.

  I can’t leave before they play.

  I can’t leave without saying hello.

  I can’t let this conversation with Beck go too long.

  “I should have been honest . . . ”

  Beck’s hunched over and no one else would notice, but his thumb and middle finger are tapping against each other in rapid succession: eight times, stop, eight times again. If he could, he’d probably try to bench press the nearest heavy object to stop the cramped breathing and sweaty hands. “I don’t understand. I mean, I almost think I understand, but there is no way that when you said you listen in on people’s sessions you meant—”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And in group. What you were saying when I came in. About following guys, about having some weird guy obsession and being a stalker—”

  “Yes,” I say, but this time it’s a growl, because in just those few words I have heard something true and horrible about what he thinks about me. Behind him Austin and Sylvia are walking onstage, grabbing guitars, and starting their half-smiling, half-snarling set. I watch them for a moment without apology.

  “So I’m here . . . stalking some guy with you,” Beck finishes off. He raises his eyebrows. I think he’s going to spit on me, that’s how pissed he looks. Sylvia’s voice is singing out over Austin’s, prettier, more melodic. But Austin is the star and he plays his guitar like it’s a woman or a wild animal, and the bar swoons and sings along.

  “It’s not romantic. Or sexual. It’s not sexual,” I say. Beck’s face has gone into such a severe frown that I let all my attention go to him instead of Austin and Sylvia.

  “God, he’s hot,” I hear Lisha say at that perfectly incorrect moment. She’s made her way back out of the crowd and goes into her purse to get some more alcohol.

  “Shit show” doesn’t even begin to describe what’s going on here.

  “I can’t be a part of this,” Beck says. He shakes his head and wraps a hand around his neck like he’s feeling for the bulging veins, the oversize muscles, the rock-hard consistency of a body part that isn’t supposed to feel so impenetrable.

  I expect to feel a desperate sadness, guilt, a rush of regret.

  Those are not the feelings that rise in me though.

  “Oh, great. That’s really great!” I say, my voice now a yell that will get lost under the music. “You spend weeks telling me to open up and I do and you just—”

  I cut myself off, because he’s gone. The loud guitar eats up my words, and Beck is making a beeline for the door. Didn’t consider staying for even one extra second, once he saw who I actually am.

  The sadness, I’m sure, is on its way, but I finally feel that other thing. That feeling I never, ever feel: anger. For all he let me see, for all I accepted in him, for all I’ve been hiding this whole time. And here he is, meeting expectations. Becoming without shame a perfect cliché. I run after him. He couldn’t hear that first outburst, but I’m not letting him get away with it. I will say this right into his ear.

  “You know what’s funny?” I say at his earlobe. The words pound in my mouth for an instant before I let them out. The other part of my mind is listening to Austin riff in between songs. Not the specifics, just the general vibration and movement of his voice, but that’s enough for the moment. “When I said I was falling for you—when I did what we did the other day—I did it knowing who you are. I mean knowing. Sweaty and blistered and scared to touch me and crying, for the love of God, crying. But then here we are, and this is me, and you’re just going to leave me.” I think on some girls falling in love is a kind of weakness, a willingness to give up everything else. But on me, on my shape and body and heart, falling in love is the opposite. It’s the strongest thing I’ve ever done.

  Beck stares at me like he’s never seen me before.

  Lights shift a little, to let us know Sylvia and Austin are going to be switching to a ballad, and I know within a note it’s definitely my favorite one, “That Lingering Thing.” It’s about what happens when someone has left you and all you remember about them five minutes after they’re out the door is the way they smell fresh out of the shower.

  Something like that. But said in, like, pretty lyrics.

  It reminds me of Beck, the shower part. He always smells like he just got out of the shower because he mostly did just get out of the shower. I can smell him now. The clean scent of him rises up from the sea of other smells: tequila and spilled beer and just-smoked cigarettes. I reach for his elbow.

  “Can you guys get off each other and just enjoy the show?” Lish says. “We came all the way out here for you, Bea, and all you’re doing is staring down your boyfriend or whatever.”

  “Yeah, you guys stay, enjoy,” Beck says. “Don’t worry, I’m heading out, Lisha.”

  “I don’t get a chance to explain?” I ask. I give big eyes and feel a hot rush in my sinuses that says I’m going to cry the second he’s out the door. I’m going to cry because if he can’t understand me, who will?

  Beck doesn’t leave right away. He pauses, thinking it over. And I know, I know I need to focus all my attention right on him and his blue eyes and the perfect shape of his shoulders and ignore everything else. I know if I can do that, if I can hold his gaze, he’ll stay. It will be enough, if I can hang on to his stare for this extended instant.

  I can’t.

  There’s an instrumental break, Sylvia playing a piano solo, which means I can’t hear Austin’s voice. I know he’s there, but I have to see. I have to look. I have to check. Beck’s mouth is relaxing from tight line to slow smile and I wish I could get lost in it but I need one little glance at Austin. And I need it now.

  Shit.

  When I look back Beck has taken a step toward the door. Then another.

  The song’s over and Austin’s mouth is on the mic. I start saying something to Beck, I open my mouth to call out to him, when Austin’s sex-filled voice hits the room.

  “My favorite fan is here tonight,” he says. “Bea? Where are you?”

  No, really. Shit.

  The crowd rustles and shifts to find me and Lisha bangs her bony body up against me, takes hold of my elbow, and lifts my arm into the air. I don’t even fight it. Beck will be out the door before I have a chance to turn back to him.

  “She’s here!” Lisha screams. You’d never guess she’s going to Harvard and hasn’t kissed a boy. She’s a whole new person tonight, letting go of the million little things she’s been holding in all this time.

  “There she is! The beautiful Bea!” Austin says with a wave. He plucks a few chords on his guitar and they shake me, not just from the vibrations. They’re for me. So is the smile (less quiet than Beck’s, more purposeful). He’s mine, for just that moment. I don’t pinch anything; I don’t even worry about someone slipping in the puddle of wine some drunk woman just spilled. It’s a glorious moment of not thinking followed immediately by remembering that Sylvia is up on that stage too. The lighting guy has found me with the spotlight. One fake suburban hipster in the crowd of real rockers and lame posers. Me.

  Sylvia finds me the moment after the spotlight does. She gives a little smile, a nervous wave, and I know she and Austin have discussed my superfandom, but I’m still not totally normal in her eyes. And I’m young and maybe okay-looking and Austin is beaming, beaming at me. And I am beaming back. She bangs the piano and Austin snaps back to his performance with a last wave my way. Lisha giggles and doesn’t let go of my elbow. I have to jerk away from her.

  “I’m sick,” I say, meaning it in every sense of the word.

  I throw up in the bathroom.

  Lisha does too, but it’s not the same thing.

 
I stay until the end of the concert, not because I want to but because I have to. I stay out of Sylvia’s sight lines as best I can and Lisha keeps hanging all over me.

  Panic hits me the second my hand hits the car door, like the whole thing is charged with an indisputable electric force. I do a quick calculation on my cell phone to consider whether or not four sips of alcohol two hours ago will affect me at all. It keeps coming up fine, but I still can’t start the car. Every way I type in the numbers and the timing and my body weight it comes out the same: four sips two hours ago is basically nothing. So I decide on a speed: twenty-one miles an hour. And drive home while Lisha stays at the club because there’s a cute boy and some girls from school she knows that have extra booze. It’s not like her to actively seek out other people, but I guess when your best friend turns out to be a psycho, you have to start opening up to other normal people.

  I pull into my driveway ninety minutes later and consider it an accomplishment. At least I made it all the way home. Had Dr. Pat been there she would have been crowing in my ear to speed up the whole time, but I am physically unable to press my foot any harder on the gas.

  I need the night to figure out who to be most mad at: Lish or Beck or the stupid indie horseshit that is Tryst or (the most likely culprit) me. There are no calls on my phone. I try calling Beck even though it’s late. I think his phone’s on, and when he doesn’t answer the first call, I do seven more, in case the whole OCD goes both ways. I guess it’s easier to hope for that than to admit he doesn’t want to talk to me.

  I play the new Tryst album to help me sleep. It seems to work, because when I wake up it’s bright outside and there’s a song on repeat, which I must have pressed before I fell asleep. I guess it’s been playing all night at a parent-friendly quiet volume.

  The song is called “Almost Over but Not Yet.” I couldn’t make this stuff up.

  I ONLY DRIVE TO THEIR apartment when i can’t stand it anymore. Twenty-four hours have passed, and some people would call that progress. I only go back after I’ve thrown up a slice of pizza and driven in circles for hours trying to resist. I only go back when the threat of what might happen, what kind of trouble I might get into, is completely obscured by the anxiety, covered the way the sun is in a solar eclipse. I’m thinking of those photographs of eclipses. I’ve been looking at them pretty often since seeing the tattoo on Austin’s neck. I like the photographs because there is a halo of light around the moon, but mostly the sun is entirely blocked by the mass of the moon. It’s such a precise representation of my OCD, I’m basically mesmerized by image after image online. Normal thinking is the sun, and the moon just keeps crossing in front of it, sometimes only partially blocking normal thoughts, sometimes obscuring them entirely.