I Hate You More

by Moody, Alexandra

  She slowly turned toward me, and a wave of satisfaction and relief rushed through me. I didn’t really want to fight any more than she did, and I was just glad she’d come to her senses quickly. “I knew you’d come around.”

  But she shook her head, her gaze unyielding and her eyes as hard as steel. “No truce, Chase,” she replied. “I’m not going to pretend you’re not the world’s biggest jerk just to make your life a little easier. I’ve handled your crap for years, I think I can handle one more year of it.”

  She was acting all brave and tough now, but we were only in day two of what was going to be a tortuous senior year. I hadn’t been certain I could handle a truce with her. Ally drove me wild, so chances weren’t high that I’d be able to hold my tongue for a year. But at least I’d been willing to give it a try. She was completely stubborn, and the fact she wouldn’t even attempt to come to a truce only proved how immature and impossible she could be.

  I folded my arms over my chest as she turned to leave. “Don’t ever say I didn’t try to do the right thing, princess.”

  She froze for a brief second before her shoulders stiffened, and she continued to walk away. She thought she could handle a year of our hostility, but I doubted she’d last a week. Whatever happened this year, it was on her. I just hoped she’d come to her senses sooner rather than later.

  7

  Ally

  “Chase has to go.”

  My friends looked up at me as I slammed my tray down on the table to emphasize my point. The cafeteria was almost empty because it was a beautiful day and most kids were outside eating in the sunshine. I wasn’t complaining because Chase and the others who were usually at his table had decided to eat out there too.

  Tessa gave me a knowing smirk. “Well, that lasted all of two days. What happened?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I said. “But let’s just say he’s an even worse houseguest than I thought he’d be. He says he wants a truce, but I just know there’s no way it will last. I don’t have a choice, the guy has to go.”

  “I thought you said you could handle it,” Miles added.

  “Well, I was wrong. Maybe while he was away for the summer I forgot what he’s really like. I mean, he’s already turned my home into his own personal bachelor pad, and that’s the least of my concerns!”

  Mia started to laugh, but I turned my glare on her. “It’s not funny.”

  “Except it kind of is,” she replied.

  I huffed out a breath and rested my head in my hands. “I’m completely doomed, aren’t I?”

  Tessa reached out and gently rubbed my back. “Not completely.”

  I groaned as I realized what she was getting at. “Your plan is not an option.”

  “It might be our only way of getting you through this year in one piece,” she protested. “I know you don’t like the idea of pretending to date Chase, but it will be short-term pain for a long-term gain.”

  I looked up at Tessa, my eyes pleading with her to understand. “Surely, we can come up with another way…”

  Tessa shrugged. “It’s the best idea I’ve got.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Miles said when I turned my gaze on him.

  Mia started smiling though when I looked in her direction. “You could always plant drugs in his room,” she suggested. “Since your dad’s so strict, I’m sure he’d throw Chase out if he found them.”

  I sat up straight. “You want me to plant drugs in his room?”

  “I mean, you hate the guy, right?”

  I paused as I considered Mia’s question. “Where would I even get drugs?”

  Tessa thumped my arm. “You’re not seriously considering this?”

  I shook my head as I realized how desperate I was. A part of me actually had been thinking about it. “No, of course not.”

  “Good, because your dad would call the cops, and he’d probably end up in jail.”

  Mia didn’t seem all that bothered by the prospect. “At least he’d no longer be living with Ally. It would solve the problem.”

  We all fell silent and stared at her for a moment, like we’d just realized our friend had a little bit of crazy in her. She burst out laughing. “Man, you should see your faces. I wasn’t serious, guys.”

  We all let out a collective sigh in relief.

  “Good, because I was beginning to worry about you,” Miles said.

  I, on the other hand, had started worrying about myself. Mia might have been joking, but for a few short moments, I’d been serious. I couldn’t believe I was so desperate to get rid of Chase that I’d considered framing him as an appropriate solution to getting him out of the house. If I was desperate enough to consider planting drugs in his room, perhaps I was desperate enough to date him.

  I let out a long breath, a feeling of defeat making my lungs constrict. “Maybe you’re right,” I said, turning to Tessa. “Maybe getting caught dating Chase is the solution I’m after.”

  My best friend’s eyes lit up brightly, and she clapped her hands. “I knew you’d come around.”

  I grimaced at her enthusiasm and shook my head. “You really don’t need to look so pleased about this. It’s never going to work.”

  “Well, it’s never going to work with that attitude,” Tessa said, pouting.

  “I’m just being realistic,” I replied. “Even if I can manage to get past his attitude for long enough to flirt with him, I wouldn’t know how to begin to get him to date me. It’s not like I’ve got a heap of experience dating boys.”

  “We’ll help you,” Mia said.

  “All the help in the world doesn’t change the fact that Chase dates cheerleaders like Jenna, not losers like me.”

  “You’re not a loser,” Mia said.

  “You know what I mean.” I wasn’t a loser, but I wasn’t Miss Popularity either. I was somewhere in that hazy middle zone of the school’s social hierarchy where I liked to think the normal people existed.

  “And you totally could have been a cheerleader,” Tessa said with a roll of her eyes.

  I laughed. “I might be able to dance, but I’ve got about as much pep as a shop assistant at the end of a ten-hour shift.”

  “True,” Tessa said with a smirk. “Man, I would pay good money to see you cheering.”

  “And I’d pay good money to avoid such a terrible experience,” I replied. “Can we get back on topic? How am I going to do this?”

  Tessa nodded. “Well, you can’t just walk up to him and ask him out on a date.”

  “Yeah, that doesn’t work for any of the other girls in school,” Mia agreed. “Except maybe Jenna, but she had to put in hours of hard flirting time, and she must have asked him out a thousand times.”

  “I don’t have that much time,” I said. “If we’re doing this, we need to do it fast.” I pushed down a shiver of repulsion that crept up my spine as I imagined asking Chase on a date. I couldn’t even imagine doing it once, let alone a thousand times.

  “Agreed,” Tessa replied. “Come over to my house tonight, and we’ll come up with a proper plan of attack.”

  “A plan?”

  Tessa nodded, and a little of the apprehension in my chest eased. I might not have had a clue how to get Chase to date me, but I might be able follow a plan if my friends were there to guide me through it.

  “Okay. I’ll be over tonight.”

  Tessa grinned in response. “By the time we’re done with Chase, that boy isn’t going to know what hit him.”

  I hoped she was right.

  * * *

  “So, I think we should start by outlining our plan on paper,” Tessa said, as we sat on her bedroom floor after school. She had a huge piece of pink poster paper laid out in front of her and a ton of multicolored markers at her side. Mia was holding a pot of glitter, so whatever the plan was, they apparently wanted to make it pretty—that was at least one thing about the whole process I could get behind.

  Miles had refused to join the planning session because he wanted to study. I got
the feeling it was a bit of an excuse, but I really didn’t blame him. I knew I should be studying too, and tendrils of guilt had coiled through me when I’d crossed out an hour of homework in my diary to do this instead. I was supposed to be working on today’s math problems, not playing with glitter, but this felt like a necessary evil.

  Nerves fluttered around my stomach as I considered what we were doing. In the heat of anger, I was ready to do anything to take Chase down. But now that I’d had a little time to cool off since our recent confrontations, Tessa’s plan sounded a little insane.

  Tessa took a black marker and wrote “Operation Pest Control” across the top of the page.

  I grinned at her choice of words. “Pest Control?”

  “Well, he’s like a big bug that’s infesting your house. It seems appropriate.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Maybe it’s a little harsh?”

  She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Do you want him gone or not?”

  “I do, I do. Please continue,” I said.

  She nodded firmly and focused back on the page. “Step one: Attraction,” she wrote.

  “And what does that involve?” I was almost worried to ask.

  “You need him to start seeing you as someone he wants to date,” Mia said.

  “And how do I do that?”

  “It’ll be easy,” Tessa added. “You’re a stunner, so there’s no problem there. You just need to stop fighting with him and start being nice.”

  “More than that,” Mia chimed in. “You need to flirt.”

  “But, don’t go overboard with the flirting,” Tessa cautioned. “I don’t want you throwing yourself at him because that doesn’t work for any of the girls at school. You need to be desirable but unattainable.”

  “Which means no more arguments with him,” Mia clarified.

  “And no mom jeans at school,” Tessa added, as she cast a disapproving look over my pants. “If you have to wear jeans, only wear that pair of Levis you have that makes your ass look good. You have to make him want you.”

  I blew out a breath. Step one was already sounding like an insurmountable challenge. I could barely bring myself to be in the same room as Chase, let alone talk to him. Flirting seemed out of the question. But Tessa and Mia seemed so positive and were scribbling notes on the poster paper as they came up with one idea after another.

  “So then once we have him hooked, we move on to Step Two: Connection,” Tessa continued.

  “Where do you come up with this stuff?” I grumbled, earning a hard look from Tessa for my interruption.

  “Connection,” she continued. “This is where you reel him in and connect on an emotional level. He needs to see that you’re more than just a pretty face and realize that the two of you can actually get along. You don’t let people in easily, and I know he hurt you when he pulled that stunt with Declan, but you’re going to need to let him see past that tough front you always put up.”

  “I don’t put up a tough front,” I replied.

  “Actually, you kind of do,” Mia said. “When Tessa asked me to sit with you guys at lunch for the first time, you made me really nervous. I got past it pretty quickly when I got to know you, but you can be quite intimidating.”

  “I can be?”

  Mia nodded. “You were super pretty, and you weren’t talking much, so I thought you might hate me.”

  “I never hated you.”

  “Well, I know that now,” Mia said with a laugh. “You just don’t give a lot away with your expression sometimes.”

  Tessa nodded her head in agreement. “She gives nothing away.”

  I looked between the two of them. “Am I really that bad?”

  “Yes,” Tessa replied. “So, you’re going to need to open up and talk with Chase and find common ground.”

  I glanced at the poster as she wrote her comments down. It looked so easy on paper, but in reality, I couldn’t see myself getting past step one. If I did make it to step two, opening up to Chase would be like going into battle without a shield. It was risky, and there was a high chance I’d end up taking a bullet wound to the chest.

  “Then, provided all that goes to plan, we move onto Step Three: Relationship,” Tessa continued. “This is where you need to go out together and get comfortable physically.”

  I instinctively scrunched my nose up at the word physical. Chase was obviously good-looking, but that didn’t mean I was okay with kissing him. “Gross,” I muttered.

  “It’s not like he’s ugly,” Mia said.

  “At least not on the outside,” Tessa added.

  I rubbed the back of my neck as I nodded. I could do this. I just needed to imagine my home free of Chase’s irritating presence. As the image rose up in my mind, I relaxed a little. “You’re right, it’s going to be worth it.”

  Tessa smiled at me with a look of pride before focusing back on her poster. “Then we finish him off with Step Four: Getting Caught. I like to think the mechanics of this are fairly self-explanatory. I think we’ll need to figure out the details once we see how your relationship has progressed and we know what we’re working with.”

  I nodded along with her. I knew this plan would end with Dad catching Chase and I together, but at least I didn’t need to worry about that part of the plan just yet. I somehow had to get through the other three steps first.

  “Do you guys really think this has a chance of working?” I asked. “I mean, Chase hates me, and I honestly think I’d have more hope of becoming an astronaut than getting him to date me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tessa reassured me. “He won’t be able to resist you once you guys stop fighting for one second and he sees the real you.”

  I slowly exhaled, wishing I had half the confidence of my friends. “I just don’t know how I’m going to do any of this.”

  “We’ll be there every step of the way,” Mia added, ginning at both Tessa and me as she spoke.

  “And we start with step one this weekend,” Tessa added. “So, keep Saturday afternoon free. Highlight it pink in that crazy diary of yours.” I smiled at the fact my best friend knew pink was the color I used for anything that couldn’t be missed. “And in the meantime, bite your tongue around Chase and wear all your cutest clothes. I know he drives you crazy, but every time he provokes you, just smile and imagine yourself in your happy place.”

  “Like a Chase-free house?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Tessa said with a grin. She picked the poster up and stuck it to one of the walls. “I’ll keep it up here in case you need reminding of any of the steps.”

  I poked out my tongue at her, making her laugh. “So, what’s the plan for Saturday?”

  “We work on attraction,” Tessa replied. “And I’ve got an idea that I’m pretty sure will ramp the attraction up sky high.”

  8

  Ally

  By the end of the week, my tongue had developed a permanent indent on it from the amount of times I’d had to bite it. I’d been trying to follow Mia and Tessa’s instructions to make peace with Chase, but keeping my opinions to myself was a struggle when it came to him. I barely managed to stop myself from uttering cutting remarks let alone make any headway with flirting.

  I don’t think Chase even noticed I was acting all that differently toward him. If anything, I think he believed that since I wasn’t rising to his provocations I must have been giving him the silent treatment. The plan was failing so far, and I really hoped Tessa had something a little more effective for me to try. I knew she was cooking something up in that devious head of hers, but she hadn’t given me a single clue about what she had planned for the weekend.

  “I’m going to need a new tongue if I keep this up,” I grumbled as I took a seat across from Tessa. It was just the two of us at lunch. Miles always had his science club meetings on Fridays, and I knew Mia had PE, so she would probably be running late. “He spent nearly an hour in the shower this morning, and by the time it was my turn, the water had gone cold.”

  “Man, that
sucks,” Tessa replied.

  “And I had to wash my hair!” I complained. “I barely got all the shampoo out, and I think I might have hypothermia.”

  Tessa rolled her eyes. “You don’t have hypothermia.”

  “Okay, probably not,” I agreed. “But I haven’t been able to get warm all day.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  I let out a sigh and shook my head. “You told me not to fight with him, so I didn’t say a word. I could tell he did it on purpose though, and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold my tongue.”

  “You’re doing great, Ally.”

  It didn’t feel like I was. If anything, by taking the high road, it felt like I was letting Chase win the war between us, and it was almost impossible to resist fighting back.

  “You might want to stop giving him the evil eyes though,” she added. “You’re going to ruin all the hard work you’ve put in if he sees you glaring at him like that!”

  I jerked my eyes away from Chase, and my cheeks warmed with embarrassment. I’d been staring at the back of his head from across the cafeteria. It seemed my hatred for him was hardwired into my brain, and even though my tongue had stopped telling him what I thought, my eyes were willing to pick up the slack.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just so frustrated with him right now, and it’s really hard not to do anything about it.”

  “You are doing something,” Tessa replied. “And I know it’s hard right now, but it will work out in the long run.”

  I had serious doubts, but Tessa had never let me down before, and I needed to trust that she knew what she was doing.

  I let out a breath and nodded as Mia appeared in the entrance to the cafeteria. She hurried over to us with shuffled steps, like she was trying to get to us as quickly but as quietly as possible. She didn’t have a lunch tray and her eyes were bright with mischief.

  “I got them,” she said, grinning as she slid into a seat across from me.