“You must think I’m a freak,” he says to our hands.
“No,” I say softly. “I don’t. I was actually just thinking I’ve never seen you look more human.”
His gaze shifts to my face. “Human?”
“All this time, I felt like you were sort of inhumanely strong, put together, flawlessly perfect. But really, you’re just like the rest of us.”
“The rest of us?”
“Yeah, with idiosyncrasies and a brain that isn’t always easy to work with.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” he scoffs.
“Have you…” I take a sip of tea for courage. “Have you ever spoken to anyone about it? The three thing, and the cleaning?”
“Like who?”
“Well, anyone.”
“No, you’re the first.”
I am both a little surprised and also not at all shocked. I’m surprised that he trusts me, in a way that puffs out my chest, but I don’t disbelieve that he hasn’t shared this with anyone else. He seems far from comfortable talking about it and I start to wonder if he’s even admitted it to himself before today.
“One of the ways they diagnose ADHD in people these days is looking for time blindness.” I shift in my chair but keep Giles’ hand in mine. “Have you ever heard of that before?” He nods. “Mine has got better. Since I’ve been on medication, and I think a little bit with age. But it still hits me sometimes. Like at night when I know I have to be awake at five-thirty to open up the café the next day but I just don’t get myself to bed on time. Or I do but I spend hours lying there scrolling or playing games on my phone. But when my meds have kicked in and I’m at work and I have that constant sense of, not urgency, but a pressure to get shit done because other people are relying on me for their coffee or their sandwich or whatever, well, I always feel like a better person when I’m less time blind. And honestly, it’s how I judge other people too. I look up to those who are organised and disciplined and always on time and always prepared and fuck, well rested because they didn’t stay up until midnight playing Tetris on their phone.” I laugh at myself and am pleased to see Giles laugh with me. “But I think doing that, revering people who don’t have time blindness, and also judging myselfbecause I have it, I think that’s what causes me more problems than my actual time blindness.”
“You should never judge yourself for being neurodivergent,” Giles says to me and I feel warmth spread out across the back of my hand as he starts to stroke the skin there.
I take another sip of tea. “And neither should you,” I tell him and hold my breath as I wait for his reaction.
First, his fingers stop moving. Secondly, his lips part slightly. And then he closes his mouth again, firmly.
Still, I watch and I wait.
“I Googled it once. A long time ago,” he says slowly. “Arithmomania. An obsession with numbers or counting. You know it’s a real thing if it’s got a Greek name, right?” His attempt at humour lacks a single atom of amusement but I smile anyway, hoping he’ll keep talking. “And I know it’s an OCD thing. And not a ‘I am obsessed with cleaning and hate germs’ type of OCD that people claim to have these days. The real kind of OCD.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Ten, fifteen years. I don’t know. But as soon as I read about the connection with OCD, I stopped researching it. It’s not that I don’t think I’ve got OCD or arithmomania or whatever. It’s because if I admit I’ve got that, whatever it is, I will then have to get help for it. And if I get help for it, they’ll try and make me stop. And if I stop…”
He trails off and I let silence sit with us for a few seconds while I take over stroking the skin on his hand.
“What will happen if you stop?”
“Anything. Everything.” Another heavy sigh.
“I get that. I don’t experience it. In many ways, I wish I did…”
“No. No, you don’t,” he says with a firmness I’ve not heard before.
“No, sorry, perhaps I don’t. But I do know what it’s like to have a brain that feels like it’s working against you. And I do believe that there are ways you can make it easier to manage that brain.”
Very suddenly, Giles drops my eye contact and my hand. “You make it all sound so easy. But I’ve always been this way. I’m too old to change now.”
I can’t help but huff out a laugh at that. “You’re pretty much the same age as me. Do I need to remind you just how much I’ve changed in the last two months?”
“It’s not always bad. Sometimes I just do it because of habit, not because I’m…” He drifts off and I can practically hear his brain ticking over searching for the right word. “Catastrophising.”
“But today?” I prompt, because it’s suddenly just hit me what preceded his little cleaning spree. Sex. With me. “Did I do something wrong?”
