Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(32)

Rake gave Lizzie a tiny shake, trying to snap her out of the runaway thoughts he couldn’t follow. “Sorry, but what the hell are you talking about?”

Lizzie blinked at him for a moment before letting out a soft laugh. She stepped away from him, stretching and straining her arms over her head as far as she could before collapsing like a deflated balloon to touch her toes. “I forgot I’m supposed to meet my friends tonight for dinner,” she mumbled to her shoes.

“Oh, okay…” Rake was still lost. “That will be fun, right? What time?”

Lizzie looked at her phone again. “In thirty-eight minutes,” she said, typing something out that Rake couldn’t see before jolting back up to standing. “And I think I’m maybe freaking out.”

“Maybe?” Rake said, arching an eyebrow.

Lizzie shot him a sardonic glance. “I’m kind of freaking out because it’s with my best friends, and I look like absolute trash and I’m also pregnant.”

“What did your friends say about all this?” Rake asked, nodding vaguely toward her torso.

“I haven’t exactly told them yet,” Lizzie admitted, plopping onto the edge of the bed and slapping her phone against her thigh.

“Why?”

Lizzie sighed. “I don’t know. Everything is happening so fast, I’m not even sure when I would’ve had a chance. I thought about telling them as soon as I found out, but I just felt like I couldn’t. Probably because my friends are all perfect and responsible and would have a lot of questions for me that I don’t have answers for. And when I try to think of answers, I get super overwhelmed, and then it’s like my mind is on one of those Tilt-A-Whirl things, and it just gets all”—she made an exploding sound, flashing her fingers for effect—“fritzy.”

“Fritzy?”

“Like my motherboard is short-circuiting,” she said, tapping her finger to her temple. She gave him a sad smile.

“But what happened? Why—”

“Do you know anyone with ADHD?” she asked suddenly.

His eyes flashed in surprise. “What?”

“Do you know anyone that has attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder?”

Rake scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck, trying to keep up. “I imagine my mates and I had a touch of it in primary school. What does this have to—”

“Anyone that isn’t a twelve-year-old boy?”

“What are you on about, Lizzie?” he asked, sitting next to her on the bed.

She took a deep breath and massaged her temples. “I have adult ADHD. It’s why I come across a bit…” She waved her hand, searching for a word. “… all over the place.”

Rake nodded, watching her.

She turned so her body was fully facing him, meeting his eyes. “And I’m trying to be more honest about that. Up front. Because for a long time, it was something I was taught to be embarrassed of, but I don’t want to live like that anymore.” She took another deep breath. “People think ADHD is just code for hyper or distracted, but that’s not it. Not for me, at least. It’s the inability to focus on or follow through on something that isn’t immediately rewarding. And it applies to so many of life’s basic things. Feeding myself. Completing a task. Total time blindness. Sometimes it feels like my brain straight-up riots against any normal executive functioning and makes me feel like I can’t do anything right. Or I act impulsively, or do something destructive, and I mess life up for people.” She stood again, resuming her pacing.

“I forget to take my meds or can’t work my way through the steps to set up a doctor’s appointment because it’s all too much. I let people down. I get in trouble at work. I get myself into situations—this included,” she said, pointing toward her stomach. “And it’s like at every turn, I’m missing something. I’m forgetting dinners with my best friends. I have to tell them I’m pregnant without a plan. I don’t have clean underwear because doing one load of laundry takes me like, eight days.”

She stopped, staring blankly at the wall. “And people have such little faith in me to fix things. Or to manage things. But I’m trying. I’m working on it.” Lizzie turned, marching to stand in front of where he sat on the bed.

“Will you go with me tonight?” she asked, her eyes pleading. “I know that’s probably a lot to ask, but I don’t want to face them alone. I love my friends, but they’ll have a lot to say and I don’t think I can field it all myself.”

The raw vulnerability in the way she looked at him would have inspired Rake to agree to just about anything. He reached out, grabbing her hands. “If that’s what you want, of course I’ll go.”

Lizzie nodded rapidly, sucking her cheeks into her mouth until her lips puckered like a fish. “I’ll probably say a bunch of stupid stuff, and Thu is a beautiful deviant menace that might flay me alive using only her words. And Indira will probably be mad that I kept it from her. Harper and her boyfriend, Dan, will be there. They might be a bit more chill. They’re so in love, I think the world is just a golden bubble of happiness, and everything is good news for them at this point but—”

Rake stood up, crushing her to his chest. “Take a breath, Lizzie.”

She was tense for a moment before sighing into his chest and wrapping her hands around his waist in a hug.