“Come on,” I shouted.
Brent shook his head at me and pulled Aribella closer. They were both looking at me like I was some kind of rabid animal, and that pissed me off even more.
“Come the fuck on,” I shouted again. He was on the other side of the pool, but when I started walking around the pool to get to him, he moved the opposite direction. A hush fell over everyone, and someone even cranked down the music so the only sound was the hum of insects in the night and the lapping of water from the now-paused game of chicken that had been raging in the pool.
The people in the pool were wading toward the edges, opening a clear path of water between me and Brent like I was fucking Moses. If this fucker was going to make me jump in the pool to beat his ass, it was definitely going to get biblical.
“Last chance,” I growled.
“Zach, come on, man,” said Brent. “You thinking kicking my ass is going to make her want you? She’s scared of you, dude. You’re only making it worse.”
Aribella looked like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world right then. “I can speak for myself,” she said quietly.
“Aribella?” asked Brent, who turned his attention away from me and to her. “Don’t tell me you actually have a thing for him.”
“I—” she clamped her mouth shut, eyes scanning the crowd. She gripped his arm and pulled on it, urging him away from so many eyes and ears. “Can we talk about this somewhere more private?”
Brent’s back straightened. “No. You can say whatever you have to say right fucking here. Let that asshole hear he has no chance. I love you, Aribella. I mean that, I—”
“Brent,” she urged. “Please, let’s just talk about this somewhere—”
I watched the two of them with a tightness in my chest. It wasn’t natural to take joy in watching a relationship fall apart like this, but I never claimed to be natural. Revenge was the language my heart spoke, and right now, it couldn’t be happier.
“I love you,” he said again.
She looked down at the water and pulled her arm away, shaking her head slowly as Brent's expression fell.
“Aribella?”
She pulled her hand out of his and walked through the crowd of onlookers, pushing her way through the semi-circle behind me to go inside my house.
No one in the crowd moved or spoke. Brent and I still stood across from each other and everyone had cleared space around both of us and between us in the pool. They expected a fight. They wanted a fight. They wanted to see the next antic in the life of Zach Thornwood, their personal celebrity. Every last one of them wanted some piece of me, some fragment to take along like a souvenir they could look back on when this was all in the past for them. Girls wanted a night with me. Guys wanted to claim I was their friend.
Standing there with the blue lights of the pool reflecting in my eyes, it all seemed so clear at that moment. I was standing alone in that crowded place, just like I had written in my dumb song. It was true, though. I felt more like an idea to them or a symbol than a person. It was a hopeless, frustrating feeling, and it made me want to break something. Or someone. The distance between Aribella and Brent was what I thought I wanted, except seeing her walk away with so much pain in her eyes didn’t taste as sweet as I’d expected. It just pissed me off even more.
Aribella was the one person who could push back the loneliness I felt. I knew that, and I still hated her for it, because loneliness was my armor. I wanted to keep the world out and keep my secrets where they belonged and yet I kept having to fight this illogical pull toward her. I knew the cure for it. Fuck her and forget her. Add her to the list of broken people in my wake and move on.
I’d give them the show they wanted, because beneath everything I was just the fucking loser who wanted to put on a show.
“You need some tissues?” I asked. It was a petulant kind of question, the kind I wouldn’t normally ask, but I knew it’d piss Brent off the most right then. He was really hurting, and I was shoving the knife in deeper by being so childish.
He walked slowly along the edge of the pool, purpose written in the lines of his face as he started coming toward me. People moved out of the way. I stood my ground, waiting for him with clenched fists.
It was time to do what I did best. Break things.
5
Aribella
I blew out a deep breath and stared at my reflection in the mirror, trying to see it like Zach would. Eight years. It had been that long since I last saw him in person. Since he chased me out of Belvedere and ruined my life. I dug in my purse for a dark, almost black tube of lipstick I still had leftover from Halloween. I spread it across my lips.
Zach used to hate girls who wore lipstick. He liked the natural look.
It was a small act of defiance that would probably end up being pointless, but I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t going to be his groupie. I wouldn’t stand in the crowd and fantasize that he was singing to me again after all these years. Smearing that lipstick on was my only little defense. It was a security measure to make sure that even if I lost my willpower and thought about doing something stupid and embarrassing, he’d take one look at me and be repulsed.
At least that was the plan.
Mandy waited outside for me. I had to grip the handrail and hop down from what she called the “Groupie Wagon.” I honestly hated the tease. I knew she meant no harm in it, but I really was good at my job. Sure, part of the work was just menial labor like yanking out a million cords from the amps and lugging heavy audio equipment around on dollies, but for smaller gigs without professional sound engineers and lighting guys, I got to help or sometimes even manage that all on my own, and I enjoyed the work.
“Uhh, you’ve got—” said Mandy, who looked at my lipstick with mingling shock and amusement.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said as casually as I could.
She reached for my hair and lifted a few strands, inspecting them with an even more bemused look on her face. “Purple this time? I’m starting to forget what your natural color was.”
“Har har,” I said dryly. My hair was a dark red that was almost purple. I think it had been a neon kind of blue the last time I saw Mandy almost six months ago. She lived in Belvedere still, working as a paralegal, while I had moved all the way to Jacksonville, Florida. I was hardly ever home, but it was where I’d tried to rebuild my life after Zach went after it with a sledgehammer, and that meant something.
I knew I was going to be setting up in downtown Jacksonville this week, so Mandy and I had arranged for her to come to visit me this time. We were going to watch the concert and then I'd show her the few things worth seeing around here. I hadn't bothered to look at the set list, though, and apparently, neither had she. Had I known Zach was headlining, I probably would've called the whole thing off so I could abuse some ice cream and read a book in private.
When the subject of Zach came up with Mandy, I always faked indifference. She didn’t know the extent of how thoroughly he had screwed me over back in Belvedere. If she knew everything that happened, she never would’ve believed I was over it all. Not even after eight years. Hell, she’d probably be checking me for concealed weapons.
The concert felt like an eerie dream, an echo of the past but not quite the past. I was brought back to the night of the battle of the bands. I stood in a crowd of jostling bodies now, sweat-soaked from the humid Florida night but not seeming to care. The bands who opened for Zach were great, and I'd seen several of them play before, but it all passed in a blur of anticipation. It would be my first time seeing him in person after all this time. Brent too, but even though Brent had shown far more kindness to me than Zach ever had, I still kept thinking about Zach.
When Zach and his band took the stage, I really did feel like I had one foot in the past and one in the present, like all that had passed between us was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. I could almost smell his cologne and feel the heat of his breath on my neck again. I could feel the warm, guilty
thrill he always caused to seep through me. Above it all, I remembered how it had felt that last day, when he had watched me with dead, emotionless eyes and asked me, “Any questions?”
I clenched my teeth at the memory. His last words to me, and the moment I swore I would cut off all emotional attachment to him. I’d failed, of course, but I tried.
I didn’t need to remember that or to feel any of it. I’d just enjoy the show. I wanted to prove to myself that I could. If I could stand here through Zach’s set without turning mopey or into a fangirl, I’d prove that it was done. Once and for all.
6
Zach
I took the stage in Jacksonville, Florida. The night was hot and the kind of humid only Florida ever seems to really manage, like the air had a weight to it that pressed in on every inch of me with warm, sticky fingers.
None of that mattered when I saw the crowd. My drug. My escape.
They roared for me. Ten thousand voices hammering into my chest. The stage lights blared down, baking the stage in a wet heat I barely felt anymore. Brent and Taylor, still with me after the shitstorm of high school in Belvedere, started to play, and the roars of the crowd died down.
I was reminded of how gray and fucking dead the rest of my life was as soon as I started to sing. I became myself in those moments. I wasn't just the pissed off bastard who left a trail of heartbreak and broken friendships in his wake. I was me. I was good at this. More than good. It was what I was born to do, and I never felt alive like I did with my fingers clenched around the mic, pouring myself into every syllable.
Like always, it came and went in a blur of fevered euphoria, like the best dream I’d ever had but couldn’t ever quite remember properly. I’d snatch at pieces and moments, trying to hold onto them to get me through the time until the next set, and they’d slip away like wisps of smoke between my fingers, leaving me with nothing but a throbbing ache to get through whatever flight or bus ride was ahead of me, whatever five star hotel or groupie was on the menu that night.
It was bland to me now. There weren’t any goals left to strive for. I had the house. The cars. The clothes. I could drop five grand or even ten grand a night on a hotel without a second thought for the price. There was no dream destination I thought maybe I’d be able to save for and go to one day. Women were nothing more than another drug. Something to consume and discard like an empty bottle, to forget about until I could find my next fix.
I was walking off stage when it happened.
My foot caught in a cord that must not have been properly secured to the ground. It hooked around my shoe and caught on my ankle, knocking me to the ground. I didn’t have time to react, and my face smashed into my guitar while my foot twisted awkwardly on the way down. The roaring crowd went dead silent.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
Strong hands were pulling me up, cradling my shoulders, untangling the cord from my ankle. I couldn’t put weight on it without sharp pain spiking up my leg, so I had to let them carry me off.
I glared straight ahead, seeing red. The fall had robbed me of the last scraps of euphoria, from the comedown of my high. All because some incompetent stagehand couldn’t tie a fucking cord down.
Once I was backstage and propped on a couch, I got the attention of Davis, my head of security. He looked like a secret service member with a shaved head, burly build, and a habit for wearing sunglasses no matter the time of day. The sunglasses were my fault. I had put it in his contract that he had to wear them because I always thought it looked badass when security guards wore them. He was smart enough not to complain.
“I want every fucker who helped set up the stage in here. Now. I don’t care what you have to do to find them all. Every. Last. One,” I growled.
David was a no bullshit, no excuses kind of guy, so he didn’t ask me how he was supposed to pull that off. He just snagged as many of his guys as he could on the way out and left.
Taylor and Brent came in a few moments later, still sweaty from the set.
“Shit, man,” said Taylor, who plopped down next to me and narrowed his eyes to study my throbbing forehead and cheek. “That’s going to be a lame ass story when girls ask how you got your scar.”
“If this leaves a scar, whoever didn’t tie down that fucking cord is going to wish they were never born,” I said.
“You know,” said Brent, who was leaning against the far wall, absently picking through the mixed nuts to find all the cashews. “You could always look where you’re going.”
“Fuck you.” I looked to my right and snagged a bottle of something alcoholic. I took a long pull from the bottle without bothering to see what it was. It burned on the way down, which was good enough for me.
Brent puffed out his annoyance, then left the room.
Good.
Half the reason I kept him around was because I didn’t want to give any credibility to the idea that I was hung up on all the drama that happened back in Belvedere. He made the mistake of trying to fuck the girl I wanted to fuck. It was that simple, and it was over. End of story.
“Damn, Zach,” said Taylor, who leaned closer to my ankle while sucking on a blunt. He blew the smoke out over my leg. “Might want a doctor to look at that shit. Looks like it’s swelling.”
I glanced down. It did look like something was wrong, but I’d worry about that later. Revenge first. It had always been my native tongue. My first and most proficient language. You fuck with me, you get fucked. Simple as that. I could fill a concert hall with all the people who’d learned the hard way, and I was about to add one to the crowd. It didn’t matter if my foot was going to be better in a couple days or a couple months. Someone was going to pay.
People were led in one by one. The first few looked like they had been working the set during the concert because they were still in uniforms of plain black. I made them all wait, fidgeting and nervous, while Taylor amused himself with the blunt and his phone. I just waited, focusing on the pain of my ankle and the throb in my face, knowing the taste of revenge would be sweet enough to chase away the pain.
Then the door opened and I saw Gardener Girl for the first time in eight years. She looked like shit. Purple hair. Black lipstick?
Beneath the hair and the lipstick, she was still there, though. The gardener’s daughter who came to Belvedere and thought she could keep her nose clean, the one who made the mistake of looking down on me and learned her lesson the hard way.
Of course, my revenge on her had never worked out the way I planned. It was supposed to end with me between her legs. I wanted her to fuck me before I cut her loose, but Gardener Girl had a habit of screwing up my plans. She was the only one who had ever met me blow for blow and almost made it out unscathed. She was no match for me in the end, though. No one was. Nobody else was heartless enough to go to the lengths I was to win. But I always won, and when she had to leave Belvedere before she even finished her junior year, I won. Make no mistake about it.
I’d kept tabs on her ever since I cast her out from Belvedere. I made sure her parents miraculously got the best jobs even though they were shitty and they liked to steal. I replaced what they took and paid for what I couldn’t replace. I made sure her sister got a scholarship and I made sure Gardener Girl at least had a place to sleep at night and a job. Of course, she’d been too fucking stubborn to take the jobs I arranged to land in her lap. Leave it to her to be too stubborn to accept my help even when she didn’t know it was coming from me.
I never quite knew why I did it, but it had felt right, so I did it. Maybe it was some part of my mom reaching through the shittiness that was me. Who knew? Who cared?
Seeing her made me forget my ankle, and I tried to stand, which wasn't the worst decision I'd made all day, but it was close. A white-hot pulse of pain sent me flopping straight back to the couch where all I could do was glare up at the assortment of stagehands, except I didn't care whose fault it was anymore. I knew who was going to pay for the mistake. It was to
o easy. Too perfect.
“Everyone out,” I snapped through gritted teeth. “Not you,” I said, pointing to Aribella, who was watching me with slightly widened eyes but an otherwise guarded expression.
The cut on my face must not have been as bad as it felt, because it had already stopped bleeding.
She waited, setting her jaw while everyone else filed out of the room, obviously glad to be off the hook.
“Everyone,” I said again, turning to glare at Taylor.
He looked up, as if surprised to be spoken to. His eyes moved between Aribella and me, then he pursed his lips and gave me a knowing look. He leaned down, one hand on my shoulder and the other close to my ear. "Good choice, man. Let her know I'll take a round when you're done, if you want."
I gripped his collar and gave it a quick yank. “You won’t touch her. Understand?”
His eyebrows pulled together and he looked at her again, as if seeing through her hair and lipstick for the first time. When he realized who she was, he nodded, remembering all the hell that she caused back in Belvedere and not wanting any part of it.
“All yours,” he said.
And then it was just me and Gardener Girl. Eight years. What felt like a lifetime stretched between now and the last time I’d seen her.
“I don’t know what this is about,” she said, voice full of a bitter edge that pissed me off instantly. “But those assholes wouldn’t let my sister in here with me. So if you’re going to say something, can you do it faster?”
I took my time letting my eyes wander from her Chuck Taylor shoes to her faded jeans and the way they hugged her legs, which had only seemed to grow more tantalizing with time. She wore a simple black The Who shirt that had a few holes around her midsection. It was a look that said she didn’t give a shit what you thought about her, but she obviously took care of her body. Her skin was flawless and she even managed to look good despite the ridiculous hair color and lipstick. The lipstick. I shuddered at the memory of that smell burning in my nostrils along with the shame and confusion that always followed.
Hate at First Sight Page 4
