Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
“Let’s do your list,” he says after we grab coffee and croissants. “You said wandering down a quiet street was on it. Montmartre is full of quiet streets where you can get lost. I don’t have a meeting for a couple hours. When are you due on set?”
“Two hours,” I say.
We go. I’ve checked off a handful of items already with him, so the list feels like it belongs to both of us now as we turn on a cobblestone street with no cars allowed.
It’s quiet, like I’ve stepped into Paris in the Belle Époque. We walk past historical-looking buildings with doors painted purple, bright green, and sunshine yellow, and with window boxes lining each story. As we wander, I take photos and send them to Camden with little captions.
“Let me take a picture of you,” Finn says.
That tone makes me comply, but so does the emotion in his voice, the clear sense that he needs this picture to remember this day when it’s long gone. When all that’s left is the memory.
I stand by an orange doorway, but I don’t smile because I don’t think that’s what he wants. I think he just wants to remember me here. I brush a strand of hair from my face and I know that’s what he’s capturing.
When he looks at his phone, he murmurs, “Perfect.”
Then he gazes up at the building, probably six stories high. Each flat has a balcony.
You could tell him.
Just as that thought lands, my mind says it again. You could tell him. And I think I’d be okay if I did.
I practice it silently a few times, but he’s faster. When he looks at me, he asks, “Jules, is there something more to the balcony thing?”
25
YOU ARE THE LIST
Jules
There is no judgment in his question. All my long-held impulses to hide and deny, to cover up and keep secrets, have vanished here with him in Paris.
Where I’m far away, and where I suppose I feel safe.
“I have OCD,” I admit. “I haven’t told anyone besides Camden.” It’s easier to say than I’d ever expected. Maybe because he asked his question so genuinely.
Or maybe it’s because I’ve been doing the work. Facing the thoughts when I need to. Trying to understand myself more. Perhaps, I don’t need to hide behind an everything is fine poker face.
Finn nods slowly, processing but not judging. “I don’t know much about OCD. Except for what you see on TV or in the movies. Handwashing, stove-checking,” he says. “But I don’t know if that’s part of it for you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t have those compulsions, though I do understand them.” That’s what most people think OCD is. Yes, some people practice those rituals. But that’s not how my anxiety manifests. “But I have these…intrusive thoughts,” I say, sharing that secret, shameful part of me out loud for perhaps only the third time—I’ve shared it with Camden, Shira, and now, this man.
I’m grateful for the quiet street. Grateful for the anonymity of Paris. But mostly, I’m grateful I don’t have to keep the secret from him anymore. “When I’m on a balcony or a rooftop or a bridge, or even a subway platform, I sometimes think terrible things,” I say, then I take a fueling breath. “Like that I could throw myself off the balcony. I could jump off a bridge. I could step in front of the train,” I say, my voice wobbly, my throat tight. “Or even at your home, when you sliced the pineapple. I just think…well, I hate knives. They make me think too much. About uncomfortable things. But I’m not suicidal. I swear I’m not,” I say, imploring him.
His gaze is caring as he keeps it locked on me. “I understand. I get it. You don’t want to, but the idea takes hold.”
“Yes,” I say, desperately relieved he’s following. “I think these things when I’m there. I think that I could hurt myself, and it makes me really uncomfortable, and I feel awful, but I have to try to talk back to my brain and remind myself the thoughts will float away…I think other awful things too,” I say, the words piling up, and I’m blurting them all out now, but I want to blurt out all these words, to say them to someone else. “Sometimes when I’m in work meetings, I start thinking about sex, and I don’t want to think that because I don’t have those feelings about anybody I’m in a meeting with. They just come to my head, and I hate them, but now that I understand where they’re coming from, I try to let them float by, accept them so they can eventually go away. I think that’s one of the reasons, besides my ex, that I didn’t have sex for so long.”
He pauses, seeming to quietly take that in. A bird chirps a couple floors above us as I study his thoughtful expression, wishing I knew what he was thinking. Have I scared him? Is he disgusted?