Free Obsessive Compulsion by CE Kilgore

out a final snort
and a deep exhale, I stir the bright orange cheese into the pasta,
separate it into two bowls, then motion for her to follow me.
    I set the two bowls on my little
bistro-sized dinette and pull out her chair. She lets me scoot her
in, as if we’re at some fancy restaurant like Alphonse and
this three-dollar mac n’ cheese is the house specialty. “I don’t
have any wine. Alcohol and I don’t really mix. But, I can make
coffee?”
    “I’d like that,” she continues to smile with
me as I head back into the kitchen.
    I have one of those single-serve k-cup style
machines with boxes and boxes of different flavors. I’m not
supposed to have caffeine either, but I’m a worse tyrant than Kyle
without it. I grin because I even have café mocha. Yeah, I bought
it after I found out she likes it, not that I ever actually
believed I’d be making it for her in my apartment.
    Two more trips delivers her mug and fork
then my mug, fork and six non-dairy creamers. When she sniffs the
cup and realizes it’s café mocha, her eyes widen to pools of
sparkling blue excitement. I stand there, staring at her so my
brain can capture every single piece of that moment to save it
forever.
    “Sit and eat before it gets cold,” Charlie’s
gentle command puts my feet back in motion.
    I’m thankful for it, her willingness to both
be patient and to take control when it becomes apparent I’m stuck.
So, I sit down and begin the ritual of adding my six creamers to my
coffee. Once I’m done, stirs counted, I look back up. “Thank you.
For this being okay, I mean.”
    She swallows her bite. “If I’d known you
were gonna pull out the fancy, name-brand stuff with the good
cheese sauce, I’d have dressed up.”
    I lean in and examine her more closely.
Simple, elegant blue silk blouse, black pencil skirt and a pair of
black leather, calf-high winter boots that make my tongue anxious.
“You look lovely.”
    “Thank you.”
    Her blush makes my whole body anxious. A
soft silence falls between us as she eats. Realizing I’m counting
her chews by the movement of her jaw, I refocus on the task of
eating my own. Fork four noodles, eat. Fork six noodles, eat.
Twelve chews each time.
    Swallowing, I look up to find her fork
hovering above her bowl and her eyes locked on the living room
behind me. The shifting expression on her face startles me stupid
for a moment, then it hits me about the same time her eyes go wide. Oh . Shit .
    Right. Defiantly didn’t think she’d ever be
in my apartment.
    She sets her fork down and gets up slowly,
her eyes widening further, as if she can’t believe what she’s
seeing. I force my latest bite down my throat, my brain protesting
that it’s only had five chews. Stopping on a prime number never
bodes well.
    “Ian…” her voice is full of questions I
don’t know how to answer.
    “I can explain,” but I’m not sure I can. So,
I follow her mutely into my living room, to a book case and a
reading chair above which exists the wall I have come to call the Gallery of Never . In my messed up world, those six drawings
of dark charcoal silhouettes bound with rope and the two
water-colored souls on a single canvas represented an impossible,
unreachable desire.
    “These…” she pauses, her head shaking as her
hands cup her mouth. She lets out a soft breath and I wait for her
to tell me what a freak I am. A creepy fucker who’s been stalking
her since day one. “These are from Richard’s gallery in
Portland?”
    “They are.” No sense lying about it now.
They are clearly originals and of course she’s going to recognize
her own drawings. “I asked him not to tell you they had sold, at
least not yet and not all at once. I… Damn, that sounds messed
up.”
    “How?” She takes a step closer to them.
    I stare at my favorite charcoal, its place
on the wall in the lower right of the two lines of three that flank
her centered watercolor I stole on Saturday. I know that results in
a prime seven, but