Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

times.”
    “I know. But I really do have to tell him.”
    “Why? At least, why do you have to tell him in a way that makes you this upset?” Louisa’s lacquered nails tapped against her latte mug. “OCD is part of who you are, Adam. It’s not all you are, but it’s part of you. Let it come into the conversation naturally.”
    “It can’t, because I can’t get past the whole other-people’s-houses thing. I hate it. Yesterday I swore up and down I’d go with him to his place, that I’d bring it up, that I’d face it because it was dumb and I shouldn’t let something like this rule my life. I’ve brought it up with my therapist, leaving out the public sex. She’s urging me to take it slow.” Louisa held up her hand in a You see? gesture, but Adam just waved it away. “Neither of you understands. If I don’t fix this, I’m going to lose him. I can feel it. Ow!” he complained as Louisa flicked him hard in the center of his forehead.
    “Adam Ellery, I thought you were smarter than this. You know damn well that’s your anxiety talking, trying to convince you there’s a monster under your bed.”
    “But there is .” Adam was getting agitated now. “Nobody gets it. My anxiety? It’s not always wrong. My first good therapist back in high school told me anxious brains are common because they’re survivalists. Cavemen who worried about where the next attack would come from were usually right, because there was an attack. My biggest problem is there isn’t a problem, so I invent them. Sometimes I don’t have to, though. Sometimes I’m right . This is one of those times.” Louisa crossed her arms over her chest, and he sighed. “Okay. It might not be as dire as I’m afraid of. But it’s time to fess up. I can feel it.”
    Louisa relaxed a little. “If he’s the right man for you, you know he’ll be okay with it.”
    Adam turned his cup exactly ninety degrees to the right, then to the left, then to the right again. “You know, I don’t think that’s what upsets me anymore. I think that’s what I’ve been telling myself, that I’m afraid of him leaving me. Honestly? I hate that I have to do this at all. I hate that this is who I am. I hate that being wiggy about who is in whose house is something that can control me. I hate that most of the time my anxiety and my OCD win. And before you tell me I can work on it, make it better, I know. I’ve come a long way from the wreck I was in high school. Sometimes it’s hard to be the one always working so hard.” He sighed. “I know. Everyone works hard. I’m sitting here bitching to a trans woman. It’s just . . .” Unable to articulate his frustration, he ran out of steam.
    Louisa’s hand caught his and squeezed it with a firmness that centered and grounded him. He looked up at her and saw not censure, not pity, just deep, passionate empathy.
    “Sometimes,” she said in her pretty, quiet voice, “being the one who has to work extra hard to come close to what is effortless for everyone else truly sucks. Is that what you were trying to say?”
    That centered feeling stretched out, the roots of his experience twining with hers. “Yeah.”
    They said nothing after that, only held hands and finished their beverages in quiet, mutually frustrated communion.

Three days after his coffee confessional with Louisa where they’d strategized all the many ways he could bring up the subject, Adam texted Denver and asked to meet him that night for dinner. To make sure he couldn’t back out of it, he mentioned that he had something he wanted to tell him.
    Nothing dramatic , he added, in case Denver thought this was a Dear John meeting. Just something about me that I want you to know .
    He sent the text, and after a few minutes of anxious stewing, added another.
    The something about me isn’t a huge deal either. I’m not an ax murderer.
    A few minutes after that, he added yet one more.
    Sorry. I’ll stop texting you constantly.
    After that, he felt he couldn’t text again, so he stewed in his own personal cocktail of paranoia. Eventually it resulted in him scrubbing down the lab, first with the disinfectant spray and paper towels, then with a brush he found in the back to clean grime out of the most remote corners, and finally a toothbrush he stole from someone’s locker. When Brad came into the lab, Adam was using the toothbrush to scour the table closest to the microscopes in precise, tiny circles.
    “Don’t,” Adam bit off when he saw