Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

made no other move, not to get out of the truck, not to speak, not to do anything. For a long time they sat in communion, staring at the pond. Eventually the impending conversation ate through even this idyll for Adam. Taking a deep breath to stifle the new rise of panic, staring out at the pond, he spoke.
    “I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
    He whispered it, but it felt like five gunshots coming through the windshield, or at least three. I have OCD. I’m mentally ill .
    When Denver said nothing, Adam had to glance at him. He found Denver frowning, in thought however, not judgment. He glanced guiltily at Adam. “Sorry, I feel like I should know what that is, but I don’t. Could you explain it to me?”
    This was not what Adam had expected, and for a second he thought Denver was making fun of him. “Yes, you do,” he insisted. “Everyone’s heard of OCD.”
    Denver relaxed on a breath. “ Oh . Okay. Yeah.” He waved his hands vaguely in the air. “You need things clean, are kind of fussy? Sure.” His expression shifted back to unease. “Is that what this is about?”
    Why did it hurt so much to see that reaction? Why, though he’d expected it, did it cut him to his core? “Yes. I’m sorry.”
    He braced for distaste.
    But once again, Denver threw him a curveball—it was he who panicked now. “Okay—but can you tell me where I screwed up? I know I’m not the neatest guy in the world, but I know I’m not the worst. Is it the truck?”
    The truck? Adam frowned, lost now. “What in the world would the truck have to do with this?”
    “I thought maybe it wasn’t clean enough.” His expression shuttered. “It’s me. I don’t clean up right. Not good enough.”
    Wait, what ? Adam shifted in the seat, shaking, but so upset and off-kilter he couldn’t make sense of anything anymore. “Are you making fun of me?”
    It wasn’t much consolation, but Denver seemed as lost as he was. “Hell no! I’m trying to fix this.” He grimaced. “Which is stupid, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I should just let you finish. Or maybe I can just finish it for you. You don’t want to be with some gym rat. Right? Well, go on then.”
    He’d almost been yelling at the end, which was scary, coming from someone as big as Denver, but it wasn’t half as scary as what he was saying. “What are you talking about? Of course I want to be with you. But you don’t want to be with me. I have OCD. It’s more than being fussy. It’s a lot more. It’s awful, and I’m a mess, and I’ve been trying not to let you see, but I’m going crazy waiting for you to figure it out, so it’s better to just tell you and let you push me away now because if I fall any harder for you I don’t know what I’m going to do—”
    Denver reached across the console and grabbed Adam’s shoulders, first with one hand and then, after maneuvering his body in the small space, with his other hand too. He didn’t shake him, but he held Adam in a grip so firm it felt like a vise, and when he spoke, his gaze bore into Adam’s eyes and held him in place.
    “I ain’t ever gonna push you away, Adam Ellery. I don’t know how you got that into your head, but I ain’t.”
    Adam went slack in his lover’s grip, and the rest of the truth spilled out. “You don’t know. You don’t know the half of it. I’m awful. Nobody would want to be with me, not if they knew.”
    Denver let go of Adam’s left shoulder to reach up and stroke his cheek, his great, fat thumb catching a silent tear.
    “Try me,” Denver demanded. “You just try and find the horrible secret about you that’s going to drive me away.”
    OCD and anxiety were the diseases of doubt. Adam knew this, lived with this. But in that moment, that one, shining moment before he began to confess, he knew something rare, something other people seemed to find so easily. Like a shooting star across the sky, in the cab of that truck, Adam knew hope. It went as quickly as it came, drowning in the great and mighty sea of uncertainty.
    But he remembered what it had been like, that moment, and he clung to its memory as he took tight hold of the mental door to the secrets of his heart and, very carefully, pulled it wide for Denver to see.

    They ended up ordering pizza, right there at the lake, sitting beside the water while they waited.
    It was about a half hour into Adam’s nervous babble, him trying to tell the story of when he’d been in seventh grade and obsessed with counting the floor