The Cleaner (Professionals 9)

"I have a good feeling about you," I told him before moving away.

Chapter Four

Finn

I have a good feeling about you.

A part of me wanted to be flattered by that.

The other part wanted to tell her just how wrong she was.

First of all, she—whether she was aware or not—thought I was a serial killer. Second, the reality of what I was wasn't much better than her theory. And, third, I hadn't been afflicted with false modesty when I told her I didn't believe I was cut out for relationships.

She didn't know the whole story.

She didn't understand.

That I hadn't just been having an anxiety attack because I was surrounded by new people. Oh, no. It couldn't have been that easy to explain. Social anxiety was a more accepted kind of mental struggle than some others.

How would she have responded if I told her I'd started to panic because the carpet was filthy? Because there were cobwebs everywhere? Because the couches looked like they'd never seen a fabric shampooer?

Or if she knew that I was camping out in my car outside the coffee house, waiting for the owner to leave. What would she think of me if she knew my backseat and the bed of my truck was weighed down with cleaning supplies? That I was looking for a chance to sneak in and clean without being caught?

People were often more accepting of people being anxious about things that, for lack of a better way to put it, made sense. Like crowds. Like getting sick. Like flying or driving. Hell, even people with agoraphobia who got too anxious to leave the house.

It was harder to understand compulsions like mine.

OCD.

I'd been diagnosed by age twenty-five, six months before I'd been discharged from service for "other designated physical or mental conditions." I'd been struggling with depression and anxiety for months before that, but my superiors largely overlooked that. It wasn't until they'd caught me scrubbing my gun for the sixth hour straight, mostly just rubbing off my own blood as it trickled from my fingertips, and mumbling about needing to get the stains off, that they finally decided I wasn't able to keep doing my duty.

People threw out the term easily.

Oh, my God, your house is so clean. You must be so OCD.

They didn't mean any harm, of course. And they didn't know the difference between a neat-freak, and someone with a genuine disorder.

I could deal with just wanting everything clean and organized. It was the intrusive thoughts that came with the desire for things being neat and just-so that made it hard to exist at times. It was those compulsions that had to be carried out to keep the thoughts away that made it hard for me to connect with people, to let them in.

Because if I let them in, I would have to tell them. What the thoughts were. The memories attached to them.

And I couldn't do that.

I couldn't handle seeing their faces when they learned about the ghosts that haunted the halls of my mind.

And what chance was there for a successful relationship with another person if you couldn't let them in?

None.

So I didn't try.

It didn't seem like it would be worth going through it all if I knew it was bound to lead nowhere.

I had to admit that, in recent years more so than ever before, the desire for something like that had been there with more adamancy than I expected. It was no wonder with so many of my coworkers finding and settling down with their significant others, building foundations, then building their lives on them.

It was hard not to be jealous of their happiness.

Especially when it felt like that had been taken from me, not something I'd willingly given up.

Back before I'd enlisted, I'd always saw my future pretty vividly. I would give a couple of years to the service. I would do my duty, learn some useful skills, save some money, and then leave when my time was up. I would have the money to buy a house and the knowledge to start a new career. Then, once I was stable, I saw myself finding the right woman, building a life with her, having some kids with her, and raising them to know the kind of love I never had.

It was jarring when I first realized I would have to re-envision my future, that all the things I had always known I would have were out of reach.

I tried to take what I could from those around me, enjoy the love that they shared, spend time with the kids they'd made.

It helped.

But it wasn't the same.

And I had to focus pretty hard not to let myself think about that too much.

Hence why I watched the owner of the coffee house leave out the back door, climb into his car, and drive off. Hopefully for a good chunk of time, because I had a lot of work to do.