Page 48 of The Fix

“Did you wash your hands?”

Toby snorts. “Nope.”

The chill that runs over me has my nose crinkling and my lip peeling back. “But you’re touching our food.”

He huffs, raises a hand to his nose and sniffs. “Smells like the perfect secret ingredient to me.”

My hand goes to my rolling stomach, and I swear I feel the color drain from my face because it’s all rushing south.

I have no idea how to act to that comment. It’s both a turn-on and a trigger that makes me queasy.

The germs …

And yet …

“Anna, I’m kidding.”

“What?” My vision fogs, and my breath rushes, as if I’m underwater.

“Anna, look at me.” His voice, grating and somehow grounding, draws my eyes right to his chest. I want to look at him. I want to see his eyes, all bright, staring back at me.

But my brain feels like static and my ears feel far away.

“Anna,” Toby snaps, commanding, and my eyes to crash against his.

He looks worried.

I don’t even see his hands move, but now they’re on my face and all I can see is him. His straight nose, his bearded chin, his thick hair.

He’s everything that should drive me nuts in the wrong way. The exact opposite of everything that I am.

Unkempt and wild.

“I’m okay.”

I don’t want him to worry.

“I’m okay,” I repeat the words, stronger this time.

I’m supposed to be helping him. Not the other way around. This isn’t about me.

“Have you eaten at all today?”

“I’m …” I suck in a deep breath, the tunneling beating back slowly the longer I focus on Toby’s furrowed brow and the space between them. “I’m good. I did. I just don’t …”

“Like germs.” He nods. “I got it.”

That’s not entirely the truth, but it’s the easiest explanation when people question me about my … quirks. I hold myself to a level of unobtainable perfectionism that’s coupled with an overachieving and obsessive compulsion to please. That, and the uncanny ability to concern myself with what others might think or say.

Like someone finding out the fingers that were just inside me are now on the communal food packaging, even though no one else is in the cabin.

Or how my weight may be construed as something negative.

The way I dress. The things I say.

I’m not compulsive enough to have a disorder, not afraid enough to have a phobia, nor am I ashamed of my body as it is. And yet, I know that if I don’t flatten and fluff my top just right, then the world will only see my larger-than-most stomach. If I don’t clean the utensils I used and return them to their original places, then something terrible might happen.

It’s not logical, just as it’s not linear, either. I’m aware of that.

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