Page 63 of Cream and Punishment
I snorted and pulled the baggie out of my purse. “Pretty hard to refuse an offer like that.”
Despite my words, I let the baggie rest on the center console unopened. It took a minute to sift through the hurricane in my head before I could form anything coherent. Max sat patiently, the corner of his mouth curving upward in a faint smile.
I fidgeted with a loose curl, alternating between winding it around my finger and giving it a nervous tug. “I’ve been doing some research lately and… I think I might have ADHD. And before you get the wrong idea like I did at first, it isn’t just ‘oh, look, a squirrel!’ and all that. Though Icanget distracted easily. But that’s beside the point.”
He nodded, his face a perfect mask of interest without judgment. How on earth he’d mastered that, I had no idea.
“The point is, it’s severe enough that it impacts my day-to-day life. A lot. But especially managing things in my life.” Like the business side of owning a bakery, for one, but it didn’t stop there. “All the necessary but boring stuff I need to do to be a functional adult, sometimes it feels like shoving my hand onto a hot stove just to do them. Like, if you tried to do that right now, your brain would stop you, right? Because you’re about to hurt yourself, and youknowit’ll hurt. Except most of these are just normal tasks, and I still can’t do them until deadlines, or some other stressmakesme do them.”
“That sounds really difficult,” Max murmured, his eyebrows pulling together.
His empathy, his lack of judgment or a simple “just do the things, it’s not that hard” nearly broke the dam on my tear ducts wide open. I didn’t have to justify myself. Cut myself open just to prove I bleed red.
“It is,” I whispered, and scrunched my eyes shut until I got a handle on my overflowing emotions again. “Anyway, I’ve been considering trying to get officially diagnosed so I can get treated for it. Which should be a no-brainer, right? If it affects my life so much, obviously I should do something about it.”
He waited, silent and present even when other tenants passed by on the way into the complex. It was his steadiness that convinced me to go on, to put words to the conflict that had been warring inside me since I’d gotten home last night. If I could trust anyone with this, it was him.
“But the thing is,” I continued, gulping back the sting in my throat, “looking back on my life knowing what I know now, I can see I’ve kind ofalwayshad it. And if I’ve lived my whole life with it” —my voice dropped until it was little more than a whisper— “what if I don’t know who I am without it?”
Max considered me for a moment, his warmth and familiar spicy scent grounding me in the present. When he spoke, he matched my volume, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. “Well, I guess then you’ll get to rediscover yourself.” He shifted in his seat to face me head-on, careful not to smoosh the cookies with his elbow. “There’s a beauty in that, too. I should know.”
I returned his smile, much wobblier and one well-spoken word away from bursting into tears. “What if nobody likes that Dekker? What ifIdon’t like her?”
“Impossible.” His eyes twinkled as they met mine. “You’re still you, even without having ADHD run your life. As far as I know, there isn’t a permanent cure, only treatment. It’ll always be a part of you. But it’s never all you are.”
Where did the distinction end? Was I creative without my buzzing thoughts constantly spitting out a billion different flavor combinations? Would I still be kind and compassionate without such a profound reaction to rejection?
“So you think I should try getting diagnosed?” I asked, searching his face.
“I think you should do whatever you feel is right. And if you choose not to and it’s making you suffer, I’ll help you in whatever way I can.”
Strangely enough, it was that selfless offer that made up my mind. The question I’d been weighing for hours now, answered with one sentence from Max.
I didn’t want him carrying me all the time, meeting me where I was because I’d knowingly let myself struggle when it could be lessened. Mostly because I knew he wouldn’t mind at all. He’d do it without complaint.
But I didn’t want that for him. For any of my friends, really.
Wading into the unknown turned my blood to ice, but if he could rediscover himself, so could I. Sure, I’d keep weighing the pros and cons, maybe sleep on the decision before forcing myself to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist who had experience diagnosing ADHD in women. That might changewhenI went through with it, but not whether I would. I’d made up my mind about pursuing this now. All thanks to him.
“Thank you.” I smiled, warmth blooming in my chest with therightnessof this decision. “You know what? Youarea decent listener, Maxwell.”
His nose wrinkled in the most adorable way. “I think I like Maximus better.”
“Maximilianois worlds better than both of them, but it never sounds right when I say it.”
A muscle in his jaw flexed as he swallowed, his eyes darting over my face. His voice dropped in volume and pitch, laced with the faintest huskiness. “It sounds right to me.”
The space between us charged with the pulse-racing weightiness that had stopped time itself when he’d touched my cheek earlier. The car became too small, too intimate, too voltaic. The scent of his tropical car freshener combined with the familiar spiciness that was sohim, I could drink it forever. We gravitated inward like the answer to each other’s siren call, spellbound and utterly powerless to stop it.
His dark eyes deepened in color, richer than the most decadent of chocolates and far more enticing. They found my lips, and there they stayed until his body pressed up against the console.
The sensation snapped the twine of fate strung between us until the recoiling ends could be seen miles away. He shot back like he’d been burned, his breathing accelerated and his lashes fluttering rapidly as he blinked away whatever hormone-induced fog had overtaken us.
I shot back in a similar manner, shocked at the visceral, almost feral urge to kiss him that had nearly consumed my last shreds of common sense. How could I manage to mess up beingfriendswith someone? Had I no respect for his wishes and desires—ones I knew perfectly well prohibited any relationships with anyone, least of all his clingy neighbor?
He fumbled with the door handle until he spilled out of the car, quickly collecting himself way more gracefully than I would’ve, and flashed a quick smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “How about we walk and talk?”
Translation: how can I get away from her faster without being rude?
