Page 33 of Skin Deep

“Not just axes,” I said, getting out my bottle of hand sanitizer to use. “Horse riding. Fencing. Guns. Survival training.”

“Shiiiit,” he said, drawing the vowel out. “Did they send you to some kind of private camp for assassins or something? That sounds intense.”

I shrugged. “My family has a lot of money and many enemies. Nikita thought I should be prepared to face them when they came for me.”

“Nikita. That’s your dad, right?”

I winced again. “I don’t call him that.”

“I noticed,” he said, nodding. “And Tatty’s your mom? But you don’t call her that either.”

“My family situation is complicated,” I said with a sigh. “Tatty and Nikita Volkov are my biological parents, but they sent me to live with Annie and Yuri Laskin when I was ten. My biological parents severed their parental rights legally so Annie and Yuri could adopt me. Tatty has stayed in my life regularly, but Nikita… He comes and goes as it benefits him.”

“That does sound complicated,” he agreed, nodding. “But seriously? It’s cool as fuck that you’re such a badass. Makes me want to fuck you even more.”

My cheeks started to burn. “Yes, well…” I cleared my throat. “It wasn’t all fun and games. My teacher was a crotchety old Serbian. Ex-special forces. Mean fucker.”

“Mm, I bet.”

The waitress arrived with our food, putting a house salad with light Italian dressing down in front of me and a greasy basket of fried chicken tenders and french fries in front of Pax.

Pax picked up a chicken tender, tried it, and then doused it in hot sauce. I focused on picking the onions and banana peppers out of the salad, setting them aside in straight rows. Then I arranged the little cherry tomatoes, counting them to make sure there weren’t five. I couldn’t eat it if there were five. Luckily, there were six little tomatoes, and they all looked clean.

“Can I ask you something?”

I looked up and winced when I realized he was watching me curiously. “You want to know what I’m doing.”

“Kinda, yeah. I mean, no offense, but I noticed you have a few… I guess you’d call them habits. Like when we were playing and you’d score a five, you wanted me to mark it down as four. I thought that you might be going easy on me at first, but it bothers you, doesn’t it?”

I sighed and put my fork down. “Is it that obvious?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me, and if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool. I just thought I’d open that door, you know? Up to you if you want to walk through it.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Right here was where I normally ended dates. Right when people started to pry. People said they didn’t care, but they did. Everyone secretly judged everyone else. That was how humans worked. I’d been on Earth long enough to know exactly where this was going.

But maybe he’s different, I told myself, and then scoffed.

“It’s okay, War,” Pax said, reaching across the table. “I’m not going to judge you.”

I stared at his hand resting on top of mine and wished I could enjoy it, but all I could think about was all the things we’d touched since coming here. How many people had put their hands all over those axes? That table? What if someone was sick? What if I got sick? His hands were covered in germs and I needed to go wash.

“I have OCD.” The words fell out of me before I could stop them.

Pax blinked like he was stunned by the news, like it wasn’t obvious that I could barely function. “Like you’re afraid of germs?”

My lip curled. I fucking hated that OCD had been brought into the general lexicon like that, as if it were shorthand for liking things neat and tidy, when it was so much worse. Those three little letters made everything more difficult, especially when it was bad.

“It’s more than that,” I said. “I have compulsions, weird things I have to do like turning off and on light switches, or a certain number of sit ups, or needing to shower all the time. And then there are the stupid obsessive intrusive thoughts or images. Things I don’t want to think or see, but I can’t stop. Horrible things. I can’t make them go away. They replay in my head over and over. And then there’s this.” I pointed at the food in front of me. “A lot of my issues are around food or cleanliness. Like I can’t eat onions, even though I like them. They have sugar in them, and I can’t have too much sugar because I’ll get fat. And even though I’ve removed them all, I know that I’ll never believe I did. I’m going to go home and I’m going to have to do exercises and sit ups, but only in multiples of four because five represents death.”

“What? Wait. Slow down.” He shook his head. “That’s why you’re such a picky eater? War, there’s not an ounce of fat on you.”

I sighed. “I’ve got enough years of medical training under my belt that I know all my numbers are healthy. That doesn’t stop me from obsessing over what might happen if I slipped up, even once. I know it’s unhealthy to be obsessed with my own health, and I know that’s an oxymoron. It changes nothing.”

“How does five equal death?” he asked.

“You’re trying to rationalize an irrational disorder of the mind,” I said, repeating something Shepherd had told me once. “Think of it more like an extreme form of anxiety where getting from point A to point B takes a journey most people wouldn’t go on. It’s not about that number. It’s aboutexcess. Four is the perfect number. Four quadrants to the human body, four limbs, four chambers in the heart. It’s an even number, a perfect square. Five is one more than four, off balance.” I speared a tomato with a fork. “Rationally, I know that it doesn’t matter if I eat four cherry tomatoes or five, but that side of me doesn’t care. I know that if I eat five, someone is going to die. I need routine. Order. Without it, I’m lost. I feel out of control. And ever since you’ve walked into my life, that’s how it’s been. Everything about you is confusing me. I don’t know how to fit you and your disorder into my life.”

Pax studied me in silence. I wished I could read his mind, but I didn’t have to. I knew what he was thinking. He was second-guessing his choice to date me, weighing pros and cons, deciding slowly that my madness wasn’t worth his happiness. Everyone came to that conclusion eventually. It was just a matter of time until he got there.

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