Obsession

Such a small gesture. Such a beautiful one.

That day, his sweater did not have a high collar. It was a crewneck, and I remember that because I was staring at his Adam's apple and wondering if he liked to be kissed on his neck.

That led into wondering if he liked to be kissed other places, and that led to imagining what his chest looked like beneath the knit sweater, and if he had that line of muscle on his ribs that some guys do, and if he had that defined V-line on his stomach that pointed beneath the waistband of those black jeans he was wearing and...

"Earth to Cecily!"

I blinked at Natasha. "What?"

She burst out laughing. "Must've been a deep thought."

"That's her writing look," Minah said loyally. "Were you thinking of a story or a poem, Cecily?"

"Um..."

"Must've been a poem about Axel's body. You were mentally undressing him!" teased Natasha.

she knows

"I wasn't." I tried to sound haughtily offended and slightly dignified, but I was betrayed by the flushing redness that started crawling up my neck.

"We all know what you were thinking," Natasha continued.

stop it natasha seriously just please stop it, stop it

"Stop it, Natasha, seriously," Minah said.

Was it logical for me to connect Minah's words with my thoughts? No. Did that stop the intrusion of the idea that they could hear the things I shrouded in my mind, that they knew what I was thinking, that they knew the only thing I thought of was Axel?

Also no.

It was crazy. Insane. It was wrong, I was wrong. I was ill, my mind was feverish, it was flicking on, off, on, off, as heavy as a lecher's kiss, and it was telling me that they knew.

It didn't help that when I looked up, eyes of ice were focused on me completely, boring past my mind and past my soul and into those dark corners where the festering moss of obsession was invading my mind like dandelions.

**

There was a list of reasons why we were perfect for each other, and a veritable encyclopedia of reasons we weren't.

That encyclopedia went from C for Crazy to S for Sick. Other reasons were sprinkled here or there: real reasons, logical reasons, things like "he's in love with your best friend" and "he deserves better than you" and "Cecily, you're fucking crazy."

I tried to force reasons in, like shoving loose-leaf papers with handwritten excuses between the pages and trying to pass them off as fact. He liked sports, I thought they were stupid. I wanted a kitten; he was allergic to cats. His face was too chiselled, his jawline too strong. I liked softer men, less intimidating ones, ones who didn't look like they could be on the covers of magazines.

They never stuck, though.

Axel was an only child. I was an only child. More than once, we'd commiserated about the lonely life of growing up without a sibling, the strangeness of being "only" when everyone else was "family."

When Axel ate dinner, he saved the best part of the meal for last. I did something similar, but I had to eat all of each item on its own before moving to the next one. Rice first, then vegetables, then chicken. Axel took it a step further; he saved the best bites from each thing for the very end. The piece of chicken with the most seasoning was cut off and pushed to the side while he ate the rest. The broccoli with the most cheese on it would sit beside it long after he finished eating the rest of the broccoli.

Axel liked horror movies. I liked thrillers. Axel liked reading quietly on the couch on rainy days; I liked reading quietly in the chair on rainy days. There were simple synchronicities between us, things that made me feel as though we were two sides of the same coin, two pieces of the same puzzle. I wouldn't go so far as to say we were cut from the same cloth. That would have been an insult to Axel.

I thought I would have been perfect for Axel if Minah hadn't been even more perfect. She was his opposite and therefore made him whole; where Axel was fire and ice, she was calming waters. He was stoic and silent; she was graceful joy. He shied away from attention and she couldn't avoid it; he was the lone wolf and she brought the pack together.

I couldn't do any of that for him. I couldn't squeeze blood from a stone, but Minah didn't have to squeeze. She knew him better than anyone.

I knew him better than she did, though in a different way. Minah didn't see Axel the way I did. She didn't know how he looked at her when she wasn't watching, didn't notice the way he tilted his head slightly to the right when people were talking. She didn't know he mimicked people's quirky little habits, that he unconsciously began resting his right hand on top of his left wrist when they sat across from each other at the table because that was how she was sitting.

I noticed that when he picked up some of mine. Of course I noticed, because I noticed when I was doing them, too. It started when Minah was cooking dinner for the three of us one evening.

"So, Cecily," she said lightly, though butterflies batted at the words and made them shake with nerves. "Axel and I wanted to discuss something with you."

they know

I tapped my fingers on the table six times. I had to; I was compelled to. Twice with my ring finger, twice with the middle, twice with the index.

"What's up?"

My voice wavered. Neither of them noticed anything unusual about that, chalking the fragility up to my usual trembling tone rather than the tornado of panic that was buffeting my throat.

Minah sat at the table beside me and across from Axel. She was going to tell me she knew I was in love with Axel. She was going to say she knew what I did to myself when I listened to them fuck. She was going to call me creepy and obsessed and disgusting and tell me to leave and never speak to them again and the worst part of all of that was that I'd never see Axel again and oh God, wasn't that the problem in the first place?

My chin trembled and I drummed my fingers again. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

"Well, you know Axel and I have been together for almost a year now."

Had it really been almost a year? I tried not to stare and simply nodded. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

"And we were thinking, maybe, if you're okay with it..."

Oh God.

"...Axel could, um, move in with us?"

Her voice lilted up at the end, partly inquisitive, partly pleading.

"With us?"

"Well, yeah. I don't... I mean, if you want to move out you can, but I really don't want you to."

Axel was looking at me. I knew he was; I could feel his eyes like they were fingernails scratching up my bare arms. I didn't look at him, couldn't look at him.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

"We'd split the rent three ways. And the utilities."

Her tone was strange, as if she didn't think she would have to convince me. It was off, not quite the Minah I knew, though I could have been imagining that. I was, of course, wrapped up in my own thoughts.

Was waking up every morning knowing Axel was in the bed just a few feet away from mine, albeit on the other side of a wall, worth saving a few hundred dollars each month? Was it worth it knowing I'd see his face all the time, morning and night, that there was no escape aside from shutting the bedroom door? He would be there all the time, he would use the same bathroom as I did, he would be naked in there moments before I was, he would eat and breathe and sleep in the same space as I did. He would be near always, be near me now, my tormenter, my love, be near me while I watched him be with someone else. It would be harrowing agony, constant torture. A few hundred dollars a month in savings, and all it would cost was my sanity.

Of course, I'd already given that up for free, so the decision was easy.

"Absolutely," I said. "Yeah. That's a great idea." Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

Minah's face lit up and I smiled back, fake and forced and unbalanced.

"I knew you'd say yes! Thank you, Cecily." She hugged me from her chair, warm and fluid, as comforting as simmering water is to a lobster. "Babe, when do you want to move in?"

I accidentally looked at Axel and was lost in ice as he stared back.

"Next week," he said, and his fingers echoed mine on the table.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

**

I wrote the best poetry of my life during the time I lived with Axel and Minah. It was really the only good thing that came of it.

I wrote constantly, nightly, daily, eagerly and fanatically. Most of the poems never saw the light of day. Two of them earned me A's in my Advanced Creative Writing class, and one of them was published in an anthology. The rest were too disturbing to even leave in writing. I ripped page after page from my notebook, tearing the sheets into tiny pieces of confetti, and threw them off our balcony to scatter in the wind, or flushed them down the toilet, or just buried them beneath the trash in the kitchen.

Minah and I graduated when Axel still had a year of school left. I began looking for jobs, something that would supplement any meagre income I scrounged from my writing. I applied at publishing houses and newspapers, then bookstores and libraries, then finally got a job as a sales associate at the fine art supply store near campus. My lack of knowledge about paintbrushes and canvases wasn't an issue; most of the customers thought they knew more than the dumb people working behind the counter, anyway. It just happened to be true in my case.

Minah taught yoga part-time while in school and began doing it full-time once she graduated. Her aim was to open her own studio, and by the time Axel graduated, she was well on her way to doing so. People loved Minah. She had a loyal following, and just lacked the initial investment to break off on her own.

Within a few months of graduating, Axel was working his almost-dream job. He was hired by the local hockey team as a junior video editor and quickly became his boss's go-to person.

I got promoted from sales associate to keyholder, so that was nice.

Six months after he graduated, I walked into our apartment after work one night to see Minah standing in the living room. The apartment was full of hot, explosive energy that seemed to radiate from where she stood.

"Cecily!" she gasped as soon as I walked in. Her eyes were sparkling, glistening, bright and manic and purely breathtaking.

"What?" I asked eagerly, drawn in by her energy.

She burst into tears, spun in a circle, and couldn't contain the exorbitant joy from twisting her body into an electric dance.

"Look!"

I did all the things I was supposed to. I hugged her and squealed and congratulated her. I grabbed her left hand and oohed over the garish stone that adorned her ring finger. I gasped theatrically and hugged her again when she asked me to be her bridesmaid, committing to it fully and telling her how honoured I was.

When Axel came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, I teased him good-naturedly, congratulated him, and found myself in the awkward position of not knowing if I was supposed to hug him, too.

Before I was really aware of the decision, Axel's arms were around me and his chest was pressed against mine and I could smell his cologne and my cheek brushed the coolness of his neck and his breath was in my ear and I was touching him, oh my God I was touching him, and then he let go.

I stepped back and laughed. It sounded deranged in my mind but Minah and Axel didn't notice. Instead, they insisted on having a drink with me to celebrate. I guzzled the sickeningly sweet sparkling wine and feigned exhaustion.

"Long day," I said. "Big order came in today. Time for bed for me. Keep it down, you two lovebirds."

Ha, ha, ha. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

They didn't keep it down and I didn't keep my hand out my panties and I didn't stop crying the entire time.

When they finished and I finished and I wiped the tears from my face, I started looking for a new place to live.

**

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and the obsession stronger.

I shouldn't have assumed being away from Axel would help me get past it. If anything, it made it worse. I conveniently forgot that I'd fallen in love with him before he lived with me and Minah, conveniently told myself that moving out would be a good thing, that it would be a cure for my poor, unwell mind.

My new home was a basement suite two blocks from work. It was small, dark, and old. Being in a basement, it should have been cold all the time, but instead it was sweltering hot. Air hung like cobwebs throughout; thick strings of dangling heat. Walking from my bedroom to the kitchen was like swimming. Even opening the windows didn't seem to help; the air was immobile, as much a part of my apartment as the walls and the floors and the fixtures.

Still, as Minah and Axel helped me unload the boxes and furniture I'd taken, I was hopeful. It wasn't until we finished bringing my stuff in and were standing amongst towers of cardboard treasures that my hopes were crushed.

Minah sniffed as she wiped dust from her hands.

"Don't cry," I said.

"I'm just going to miss you." Her voice was heartbreakingly small. "If you ever need... if you need a place to stay, you know, we're always happy..."

"I know."

She hugged me tightly and my heart pinched. For the entirety of our degrees and a year-and-a-half past, we had lived together. She was the closest thing I had to any sort of sister, the closest friend I had. It was a testament to how I loved her that even though she was with Axel, I never resented her for it. I never resented him for loving her, either.

After Minah let go, I smiled. I kept smiling as Axel took her place, smiled as he hugged me, smiled as I tried not to inhale the scent of sweat and cologne and him. I smiled as my body tingled, as my heart ached, as we parted.

"I'm going to miss you," he said.

"Yes," I breathed.

He gave me the strangest look.

When they left, I sank onto the puffy couch we'd hauled down the stairs and put my head in my hands. I could feel him on me, could smell the ghost of his cologne and his sweat sticking to my shirt.

He was going to miss me.

I spent the rest of the night replaying that moment in my mind. His body, his arms, his scent, his gravelly voice echoing over and over in my mind. I was trapped in my own mind, frozen stiff by memories that made my heart soar the way someone jumping off a bridge soars. It hurt, all of it hurt, and I still knew how wrong it was and how toxic and crazy and fucked up it all was. I knew it and it still didn't stop me from feeling it, couldn't stop me from feeling it, and I hated myself for it.

I wanted to puke; I wanted to cry. I wanted Axel more than anything else in the world. I wanted that moment back, I wanted him to say the words again. I wanted to relive it over and over, I wanted it, even though I knew it would hurt every time, I wanted him in a way that was so all-encompassing and so sick that I couldn't handle it anymore.

When I crawled into bed, I lay awake for a long time. There was no shared wall, anymore, no thumping bedframe that told me when Axel had his cock inside Minah, no stifled moans or deep grunts.

Well, there was, but not in the real world.

I listened to it in my mind, like having a song stuck in my head on repeat, constant and aggravating and unsatisfying. I could hear them, really almost hear them, could almost see them together. Closing my eyes transported me home, because where I was wasn't home. Home was in my mind.

I choked back a sob, slid my hand between my legs, and listened to the song playing in my mind again, and again, and again.

**

Even having moved, everything was still the same for me. Minah applied for a business loan to get her yoga studio started. Axel was promoted from junior video editor to video editor. I still worked the same shitty job at the art store. Still made almost no money by writing. Still obsessing over Axel, still knew it was wrong, still couldn't stop.

Minah suggested getting together at least once a week. I always said yes.

At first, Axel was there every time. The more he was there, the more I convinced myself he knew exactly what was going through my mind at any given moment. The more I convinced myself of that, the quieter I became around him, until I caught myself responding to questions only in my mind.

"How are things going?" he asked one day.

it's going terribly i'm miserable and i miss you

There was a long, long pause.

"Uh... Cecily?"

"Sorry," I said. "I was... thinking. Things are going fine."

He stared at me, nodded slightly, and looked to Minah to continue the conversation.

I stopped seeing him so often after that. Often, he was there when we got together, and sometimes he wasn't. Then sometimes he was there, and often he wasn't, and when he was there, he wasn't Axel, not my version of Axel, not the Axel I obsessed over. He seemed withdrawn, more so than he usually was, and tense. There was still a little part of me that was sane enough to assume it was because he thought I was crazy.

The crazy part of me still insisted it was because he could magically read my mind and knew the dirty, perverted things I thought about him. That crazy part still insisted on loving him, on daydreaming about him, on wishing for one more brush of his fingers or stilted hug, one more masochistic night that I could listen to him and Minah.

That crazy part also whispered that something was wrong, that Axel wasn't okay. It murmured, pulled towards him, tried to tell me something that I refused to hear.

It was a night just a few months before the wedding when everything changed.

"Where's Axel tonight?" I asked when Minah came into the bar.

"Working," she said lightly. "He says hello."

For an evening, it was like old times, pre-Axel times, times when it was just me and Minah gossiping and giggling and talking. We drank heavily and ordered fried appetizers, chatting about miscellany and sundries, and for a while, I wasn't obsessed. I wasn't sick. I was just Cecily again.

Even when she brought up the wedding, I was okay. I was okay right up until she smiled sadly, took a sip of her drink, and tilted her head to the left as she looked at me.

"Are you okay, Cecily?"

"Yeah, why?"

She leaned forward. "I mean, really okay? You... seem different."

Different? What could possibly be different? I'd been obsessed with her now-fiancé for years. Nothing had changed there, except the fact that I barely saw him anymore and that I was miserable because I barely saw him anymore, and barely seeing him anymore meant I should be able to just get the fuck over him, but instead my fucked up mind was insisting on making me remember what he sounded like when he came and what he smelled like when he was moving boxes and...

"Cecily?"

I continued staring at her and Minah looked worried. Really, really worried.

"Cecily, what—"

"Sorry," I said. "I was... I'm fine. I mean, yeah, I seem different. I'm living on my own for the first time and it's... I miss you guys a lot."

She laughed lightly, awkwardly.

"Okay. Well... that's... I mean, that's better than me, I guess."

Better than her?

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'm... worried."

"About what?"

"Axel."

"Like, about him and the wedding?"

"Just in general," she whispered. "He's... we're fighting a lot more now."

Fighting? Axel and Minah were fighting?

"How?" I breathed.

She shrugged, still not looking at me. "You know how sometimes people get really upset? Like... like really, really upset? And it's not... I mean, you know. It's not really their fault that they get upset?"

The drink I was sipping turned to gravel in my mouth. Pebble by pebble, rocks filled my stomach as I processed what she was asking me. Axel couldn't. He wouldn't. He... my Axel was gentle. He wasn't capable of... it was impossible. Impossible.