10 Days [Brallon]

Purple

[welp here's the reveal to the OCD thing I was hinting at. If I wrote it wrong tell me pls n thank
Also
-it's been 4 days yikes
-new thing published after this book which is gonna be cool I'm excite
stay tuned]

I sat in the grass on a beach towel right besides Brendon, holding a 3 pack of Clorox wipe tubes. He'd somehow thought up the sarcastically brilliant idea he would be able to disinfect the 2 buckets involved in the 7th date (inside and out) along with the blades of grass surrounding it. I'd told him he can't clean grass, yet he'd spent the last half hour doing it.

Things had started to get more out of hand recently. When I'd first met Brendon, he had a decent handle on the OCD, only occasionally folding dollar bills into little paper cranes or something simple and sweet like that. When he'd called me down to his house this morning, there were dozens of bowls filled with coins soaking in some weird vinegar-y mixture I'd been informed would clean them. The entire time Brendon had gone over the plans he'd set up, he was continuously washing over the already spotless countertops. The other day I caught him scrubbing his hands until they bled, the day before throwing his shirts through the machine 4 consecutive times. It'd gotten worse, and not even Pete and Josh knew why. Patrick and Tyler had been oblivious to the whole situation until I'd brought to their attention, so they had no idea either, and I was stuck.

"Brendon, for the 16th time, you can't clean the grass-"

"It's dirty and smells funny."

"For the 17th time, you can't clean the grass."

"There's dirt. And bugs."

"For the 18th time you can't clean the grass."

"People stepped on it."

"For the 19th time-"

He cried out in frustration, tossing his wipe box across the park. He buried his face in his hands and flopped backwards on the ground. I guess the realization that the rest of the ground was dirty freaked him out, beside next thing I knew Brendon was curled up on my lap, arms clinging around my neck as if he were dangling above lava.

"It's hopeless," he sniffed "its gotten worse and I hate it, I hate it so much."

I stopped myself right before I said OCD isn't hopeless, because he'd never told me and he'd either freak if I told him Ryan had brought it up, or he would probably get upset if I said I'd assumed because then that would mean I decided not to ask him about it. Disquieting consequences aside, there was no ignoring the situation this time around. It was not another sock and peanut butter debacle. "What's hopeless?"

I guess I should've said something more along the lines of "it's okay" instead of asking, because all he did was wail into my shirt. I wasn't exactly complaining because he was warm and I was kinda cold, but I didn't want him to be upset.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're gonna hate me and you'll never ever ever forgive me because I never told you because I was afraid to tell you in case you didn't want to be around me if you found out-"

"Brendon, you're talking way too fast, I can't understand a word you're saying," I hugged him back and his breaths hitched until they evened out. "What did you want to tell me?"

He shook his head no and buried his face in the crook of my neck. "You have to promise you won't be mad at me."

"Because you wouldn't tell me?"

"No, because of it," Brendon leaned backwards, his fingers locked together behind my neck, acting like a sling "you have to promise. Please?"