Oh dear god. This has taken 4 weeks to update and I am s o sorry about that. I had finals and now I'm on winter holiday and I thought I would spend my time writing, but ended up getting a holiday job and now I'm finally finishing this part. I have already started on the next part so I will have it up tomorrow to make up for the lack of updates for the past month (jesus I feel terrible about that).
Enjoy...
(very important note: the 2 bolded words are intended to be striked out but I didn't know how to do that on wattpad so I improvised, aka they are suppose to be thoughts Harry corrects internally, also I haven't edited this yet)
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The first thing I heard was the banging on the door, then the stereotypical loud screech from a cat, and then finally I heard her.
“Open, just, open…” I was in the bed we once consummated our love in and could still hear her words as clearly as if she was breathing them like pillow talk in my ear. She had a direct line to my body, all parts of it, even now after a month of being separated sans two days ago in the lawn and garden aisle. I also could clearly hear the slur in her usually enunciated and well formed speech.
My former girl better not be drunk and alone standing outside of our house right now. I sprinted down the stairs, not for a second thinking about the fact that I had my hands on the walls causing finger print marks of the paint I spent many days fixing again and again month after month. God, no wonder she fucking left me, I was pathetic, spending my time fixing the paint and not paying attention to the soul enrapturing woman who just wanted me.
I swung the door open to find her with black eye make up smeared under her eyes, hair tousled up as if she’d been running her hands all through it in frustration, eyes drooped with inebriation, and a sway in her stance that had my heart in my throat.
“The door was unlocked,” was all I muttered to her. Even drunk, I knew she’d understand what I was saying.
“You broke my heart too, y’know?” She didn’t address the confession I just made to her, but she cocked her eyebrows up physically telling me I was about to hear one of her infamous rants. She brushed past me into the living room where I professed my love to her for the first time in the only way I knew how.
“What’s this?” She squinted to look at a piece of scratch paper on the coffee table as I made sandwiches for us in the kitchen.
“Um….a list,” I flustered. I put it there for her to intentionally find it, only to feel shy when she did. “A list of some of my ticks and rituals. I felt as if I wrote them down in order of importance it would help me organize my disorder.” Pull it the fuck together, Harry. You adore every ounce of this woman’s cosmic being and now is not the time to clam up like you’re presenting a project to a class.
“So you ordered the aspects of your disorder that causes you to feel an excessive need to be orderly,” I could hear the grin in her voice from 22 steps away and it calmed all the nerves I had and caused me to mess up spreading the lettuce evenly, meaning new sandwiches were to be made. The only things I felt in my heart was love and hope that she hadn’t looked at the list yet and wasn’t purposely avoiding the contents of the list.
Minutes passed. 3 minutes and 37 seconds to be exact. Then she came into the kitchen with a look that, even to me, was unreadable, staring at the list.
“The list says, ‘make sure she knows I love her, make sure the doors are locked, make sure the lights are off, make sure she sees I love her, don’t let any books be out of place, make sure she feels I love her, say words until they feel right, love her, lock my car 3 times, love her, don’t step on any cracks in the sidewalk, love her, love her, love her,’” She finally looked at me.
“That’s the abridged version,” I tried to keep it lighthearted. Rejection won’t hurt as much if it’s masked with a joke.
Bewildered, she asked me, “you think I’m more important that the ticks?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
"I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
No matter what she did with it, in that moment my soul completely became hers. Excluding my mother, she was the first person to ever tell me they loved me. I handed her my everything on a silver platter and for what felt like a neverending fleeting moment, I was hers and that’s all I ever wanted.
“I loved you. I still love you. I’ll always love you,” she began her rant with words that had my breath caught beside my heart in my throat, but for some unknown reason that didn’t stop the venomous words to spill out to meet hers.
“You walked out on me.”
“You didn’t chase me,” she snapped right back. Only under the guise of alcohol and in the lawn and garden aisle did she say what was on her mind with no preconsideration.
I wanted to tell her that was ridiculous to assume I should have chased her. I wanted to yell that the last thing the woman I fell madly, furiously, and completely in love with would expect is for a man to chase her to her car. But I could find the words. Words didn’t seem to feel right, not because of my disorder, not because none of them were perfect, and not because I could see the tears forming in her eyes. I truly couldn’t find any words to tell her that the reason I didn’t chase her is because she paralyzed me. Physically, emotionally, and in all the forms she knew me. Her walking out of that door took the world that had finally come into place after a tormented childhood of imperfection and ripped it apart at the seams. Not only could I not find it in me to move my legs, I couldn’t find it in me to feel anything other than a darkness she had shined a light from within the divine soul she possessed.
So I stood there staring at the drunk woman I was still enthralled with, mouth slightly agape, and eyes blinking rapidly.
Before I could stop myself, I broke out of my catatonic state to pull her to me. I grabbed her shoulders and brought her body to mine. I had spent the last month getting myself to better place mentally and trying to overcome my inner demons, only in the moment to find they were all futile. She was my better place and as much as I could try to ignore the imperfection tainting the world around me, it was all pointless without the only perfect thing I had ever felt within the my own depths.
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I feel weird about this part and it might be because I wrote it slightly drunk. Whoops. I only have a couple of parts left (maybe 1, maybe 2, maybe 3 depending on the ending I choose). HOWEVER, I'm going to start a 'series' of short stories, each focusing on a different disorder/issue/topic similar to the OCD/other comorbidities within this story.
Let me know your thoughts on this part/story/anything!
xx
