Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
FINN
I don’t know what my mother said to Oakleigh while I wasn’t there, but whatever it was, I could kiss her for it.
Cherry has been a lot touchier ever since, and even though I can tell that some of them are for show, there is the occasional move she makes that I feel can’t be helped.
The odd time that she’ll rest her hand on my bicep and her words will falter when I flex.
The way her kisses to my cheek linger, and she always is the first to reach for my hand subconsciously.
I’m suddenly really grateful that my mother invited herself.
There’s a method to me walking behind them. It means that Oakleigh doesn’t always notice when I stop at a stall and buy her something that I think she’ll like. She hasn’t stopped to buy anything yet, but I can tell she’s taking everything in and then will decide what she wants afterward.
“You ladies hungry yet?” I ask from behind them.
“Oh, I could eat,” my mother answers, her grin widening.
“Me too,” Oakleigh agrees.
“Let’s head over there, then. That’s where all the food is.”
“Is all of the food made from cherries?” my mom asks with genuine fascination.
“Unfortunately, there is a limit to how much cherries can achieve.” Oakleigh pretends to gasp. “Sorry, my love.”
Her smile falters, but she catches it before it can disappear completely.
I steer them over to the food trucks and stalls selling hot food and they take the time to look around.
I let them have their time to look around and stand off to the side so I’m out of the way.
Usually, that’s how I prefer to be, out of the way; hidden in the shadows and watching from afar.
I’ve never really been a fan of socializing, I suppose that’s why I get on with Gus so much, we both feel comfortable knowing the other barely knows what they’re doing.
I think that’s why I started my company.
In construction, you give orders, you give clients a rundown and then you fuck off.
You build what you need to and leave them behind, taking their money with you.
Granted, you also get to do that as an architect, my dream job, and yet that also involves a confidence that I just didn’t have back then… Still don’t, if I’m being honest.
Lately, I haven’t really been that way. I’ve put myself into the spotlight in town now that everyone knows about Oakleigh and myself.
I am particularly talkative when we meet up with our friends; and with Oakleigh, there’s this need to keep the conversation going as long as possible for fear that it will end too soon.
Because ending at all would be ending too soon.
I look up to see Mom and Oakleigh waiting in line for this food truck that sells bao buns, one of which is a pulled duck with cherry sauce, something I know Oakleigh is going to get.
I’m halfway toward them, when the shitshow starts in my mind.
Food trucks are just so full of germs, my mind says.
I flinch at the sound of my own voice in my head, so sharp and cutting.
What if she gets sick eating that?
She’s not going to get sick. Hygiene at these things is regulated, isn’t it?
She’ll get sick, and then she’ll get worse and worse and worse. Slowly, painfully.
My steps speed up and there’s nothing I can do about it.
It’s as if my intrusive thoughts are completely in charge of my body now.
My steps are determined and strong despite the crippling anxiety sitting in my bloodstream.
My breaths are no longer my own, my body no longer under my control.
Everything now belongs to my anxiety, my OCD.
When I make it over to Oakleigh, I take her by the waist and drag her out of the line.
“Whoa, Finn, what’s going on?”
“You can’t eat that,” I say firmly.
Her eyebrow raises and defiance settles around her like a wall. “Oh, I can’t?”
“No. Wait until we get home.”
She looks at me with disbelief. I don’t blame her, and I want to stop, but right now that’s just not an option.
“Finn, I’m going to eat whatever the fuck I want.” She tries to move past me, but I stop her.
“Oakleigh, you can’t.”
“The fuck I can’t.”
I see my mother join us in my peripheral, but my anxiety is like blinkers on either side of my eyes, it doesn’t care what’s there, it just knows what it needs to do.
“Finley?” Mom asks softly, her hand lightly resting on my shoulder.
A lady and her kid walk behind Oakleigh, and the little girl is holding a tray of the exact buns Oakleigh was going to buy.
Sick. Sick. Sick.
“Shut up!” I slap the side of my head and the throbbing it leaves behind silences my mind for a few seconds.
“Finley!” my mother gasps and grabs my hand, pulling it far away from my head. Oakleigh stays stuck in place, watching me with a look that I don’t have the capacity to decipher right now.
I look up into my mom’s brown eyes, which are swimming with unshed tears.
It’s been years since she’s seen this side of my OCD.
The therapy sessions with Dr. Madden were once upon a time so helpful that the compulsions were almost nonexistent thanks to his way of teaching me to overcome the urges.
But those sessions haven’t occurred in months, and I am slowly declining back to my old ways.
I’m just surprised it’s happening this fast.
I roll my lips together and bite the inside of my bottom lip until it hurts.
Embarrassment and fear cloud my feelings and muddle my thoughts until I’m just a massive lump of regret.
I did all of this with Oakleigh, partly to get her to see how good we can be together, but also to ease my mother’s anxiety about me being alone, and in the space of a single minute, I’ve pretty much fucked up my chances of both.
“Finley, don’t do that, my darling, please.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.” I pull my mother close and hug her tight. “I’m so sorry.”
I don’t dare look at Oakleigh. I’m not in the mood to torture myself with the look of embarrassment and shame that’s probably blending together in her eyes. I pull my card out of my wallet hastily, my movements clumsy and rushed. I hold it out to my girlfriend without looking at her.
“Finn,” she starts, her voice surprisingly soft.
I wave the card about, motioning for her to take it, but she doesn’t.
“Oakleigh, take it.” I don’t mean for it to come out as harshly as it does.
I’m more desperate than anything and yet it sounds like anger is coating my words.
I can tell that she’s hesitant as she plucks the card from between my fingers.
“I just need a few minutes. Get yourselves something to eat while I’m gone.
Use my card.” I’m about to walk away, but I stop to add, “Anything you want.”
* * *
I spend some time sitting in the car, my body feeling heavy with regret and fatigue.
Besides no other woman holding a match up to Oakleigh, one of the reasons that I’ve been avoiding dating is the burden I would put on a woman.
Hell, it’s part of the reason that I never tried anything with Oakleigh until now.
Am I a burden? Yes, of course. Before therapy, situations like what transpired today were just the tip of a very jagged iceberg.
I don’t want Oakleigh to have to deal with my shit.
I’m not embarrassed about earlier because we were around a shitload of people, but rather because it happened in front of Cherry.
I don’t want her to think of me as weak or incapable.
And my poor mother had to witness something that used to make her cry every time she saw it.
Sometimes, I wonder if she cries because she’s thinking that this isn’t what my birth parents would have wanted for me.
A soft tap against the window drags me from my pit of self-deprecation.
Oakleigh is bent over so she can see in the window.
She smiles softly when I see her. With a harsh sigh and a shake of my head, I grab my car keys and step out of the car.
Just like the night I drove her home all those months ago, Oakleigh doesn’t move, leaving us almost flush against one another.
I tuck my hands into my pockets and wait for her to speak.
She seems lost for words, looking down at the ground around us as if she’ll find them somewhere.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
She fiddles with her fingers and I’m seeing why she’s here.
She thinks it would look weird to my mom if she didn’t.
She’s here out of necessity. When I saw her, at first something in my chest had loosened.
I thought she was here because she wanted to be, and now that warmth I felt is fading.
The silence between us drags, becoming more and more awkward as the seconds tick on, leaving us behind.
“Where’s my mom?” I ask, no longer bearing the weight of this cursed quiet.
“She’s still by the food trucks. She’s just sat down eating something. I promised her I’d be right back.”
I nod slowly and lock my car. “Well, we best not keep her waiting then.”
I try to start walking, but Oakleigh doesn’t budge. I frown down at her. “Is something wrong?”
“I should be asking you that.”
“I’m fine.” I try and move around her, but all it takes is a hand on my chest and I’m frozen in place. I keep my gaze locked on the field of grass just over her head, using it as an anchoring point for my sanity and my fast-fading hope.
“I was worried about you.” She says it so quietly I’m not even sure I’ve heard her, and yet there’s nothing else I could have mistaken her words for.
That seriously can’t be all it takes. Surely, I need more than soft-spoken words and a hand on my chest to fold that quickly for her.
Can I seriously be that far gone? Apparently, I can, because immediately after she says the words, I can already feel my face relaxing, my expression softening until I’m smiling down at her.
She’s staring straight ahead at my chest, a frown marring the smooth skin on her forehead.
I tilt her head up with two fingers under her chin, my other hand slotting some stray hairs behind her ear.
“I’m here, baby. Nothing to worry about, I promise.”
Her expression goes from worried, to annoyed, and back to worried.
I know why. She’s annoyed that she cares at all.
She’d rather carry on pretending to hate me, and yes, I say “pretending” because she can claim she hates me all she likes, but with the way she reacts to me and the way she softens even when she doesn’t want to, tells me differently.
I leave a kiss on her forehead, my lips lingering longer than I gave them permission to.
“Come on.” I slide my hand down to her hand, clasping it tightly in mine. “You haven’t even tried to buy a single thing, and coming from you that’s just heinous.”
I drag her back and together we locate my mom who is stuffing her face with tacos. When she spots us, she looks guilty, but one kiss on her cheek from both of us fixes that.
We head back to the main path and stop by a few stalls. Mom stops us when we’re about to cross over to the other side to look at the stalls opposite.
“Wait! I want a photo of the two of you!” she squeals.
“Mom,” I chide, my cheeks heating up.
“Oh, please. The two of you together is the sweetest thing, I just have to! I have one of Wren and Gus, so if you think you’re getting out of this you’re sorely mistaken!”
With an incredible amount of reluctance, Oakleigh and I both plant ourselves in the middle of the path, another cherry-blossom arch standing not far behind us.
“Try to look in love with me, okay, Cherry?” I say quietly enough that my mom can’t hear.
Oakleigh stays staring ahead as she scoffs. “Have you ceased being an annoying asshole?”
“Hard to stop being something when I never even started being it.”
“Oh, please.”
Her arm snakes around me, her fingers only just scraping the side of my torso.
“Okay, I might claim the annoying part. I do find a lot of joy in making you scowl at me. But an asshole? Never.”
“You find joy in it, do you?” Her hand starts to clench until her nails are digging into me.
“If I’m being completely honest, I’m beginning to find it borders on our own fucked-up kind of foreplay.”
Her wide eyes snap to me, and I bite my lip to hold in my laugh. I keep looking straight ahead at my mom, who is having a field day trying to find the best angle. Oakleigh sees me trying to remain calm and composed and she shifts her foot until it’s over mine, pressing down as hard as she can.
I don’t even flinch. “You know you weigh nothing, right?”
She tries to keep her face straight as she scoffs. “You’re impossible.”
“Oh, a new one. This one I also have to disagree on, though.”
She sighs and then looks up at me with a dazzling smile. “Is this good enough for you, my darling?”
I smile down at her. “Perfect, my sweetie pie. You look utterly infatuated.”
My mom squeals as she rushes over to us.
“They look so cute!” she cries, tucking her phone back into her pocket.
“You’re not even going to show us?” I ask with a laugh.
“Nope! You’ll have to wait.”
She motions for us to follow. Oakleigh and I look at one another and she surprises me by letting out a laugh that sounds like its closer to a snort than anything else. She looks free, unrestrained, and I finally feel like I might be making some headway.