Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

But it was all a fantasy, because there was no way Denver was going to do it. So he tucked the fantasy away, dusted his gloves, and got back to the much less agonizing task of deadlifting four hundred pounds.

“Your ex sounds like a real ass.”
    Louisa made this observation as she and Adam sat in Mocha Springs Eternal, her sipping a vanilla latte, him drinking green pomegranate tea. Their lunch had turned into a stroll across campus and had landed them in the Light District, where they’d decided they both very much needed coffee, or in Adam’s case, tea. They were in one of the side lounges, Adam sprawled in a love seat and Louisa in a wing chair. A local band consisting of a bassist, fiddler, and harpist fussed about setting up at the other end of the coffee shop.
    Adam dunked his tea bag three times, held it still for three seconds, then dunked it a fourth time before removing it and placing it carefully in the extra cup he’d requested for just this purpose. “He can be. But he means well, I know that. I’m no angel. And he’s right. I have a metric ton of baggage.”
    “I assume you’ve heard the one about the road to hell and how it’s paved?” Louisa sipped her latte and eased deeper into her chair. “By your own admission, his meddling makes you worse. Would you have had a panic attack today if he hadn’t jumped you on the way to the cafeteria?”
    Probably not, no. “He wasn’t always this way. He was very patient with me at first. I’d started to doubt I’d ever have a boyfriend, but then there he was. Before he messed with my head, he helped me. A lot.”
    “Just because he helped you over a hurdle doesn’t mean you owe him for life, Adam. You don’t owe him anything at all. That’s not how relationships work.”
    “You don’t understand. Brad put up with a lot. I mean, a lot .”
    Louisa sighed. “Yes. My last boyfriend did too. He had to hear his Louis was about to become a Louisa. Do you think I owed it to him to stay male because that’s what he preferred?”
    Adam grimaced. “Obviously not.”
    “Same goes for you. Brad helped you find your feet in relationships. Then you wanted to take your personal relationship with yourself in a different direction than what he was accustomed to, and he objected. Are you trying to tell me you can’t choose a different path because Brad doesn’t want you to?” Her hand closed over his, which was the first time he realized he’d been tapping his finger. Not just tapping, but what Brad had called his SOS tap, a staccato burst of energy that usually meant a panic attack was just around the corner. Louisa’s gaze softened. “I’ve been trying to read you, but I’m training to be a licensed independent social worker, not getting a Ph.D. in psychiatry. You are OCD, right?”
    Adam shut his eyes. “God. I’m that obvious? You’ve known me four hours.”
    “I knew my mother for twenty-eight years. Obsessive-compulsive disorder and I are old acquaintances.” She let go of Adam’s hand with a gentle pat and eased into her chair again. “There was a light switch at the bottom of the stairs and the top of the stairs in our house, two switches on the same circuit. My mother insisted the downstairs switch had to be pointed down at all times when the light was off. My sister and I would humor her, but my father said it was ridiculous and forced her, usually with shouting, to endure it off and upright. He also wouldn’t let her rattle the drawers to make sure they’d caught or sweep the driveway with the whisk broom because she thought it cleaned better than the floor broom. The latter I was grateful for, but the others were harder. I would hear her sneaking out of her bedroom in the middle of the night to fix the switch, and I knew it was because she couldn’t sleep with it set the wrong way. She had panic attacks too, but you weren’t allowed to touch her when she was ramping up into one or trying to avoid it. She was a counter too. She counted everything. Cracks in the sidewalk. Tiles in the ceiling. She never went to therapy or took medication either, not while we were still speaking.”
    “You’re not speaking to your parents? I’m sorry.”
    Louisa shrugged. “It’s their loss. And frankly, at this point it’s a relief. They tried to get me into conversion therapy when I was simply gay, but as soon as I was transgender they couldn’t bear to see or speak to me. So I have my family of choice now.” She sighed. “Sadly,