Hate at First Sight

by Penelope Bloom

  I was on the tennis courts after school. Belvedere High had some of the fanciest courts I’d ever seen. They even had plastic sponsor boards lining the bottom of the fence just like you’d see in a national tournament court, as well as bleacher seating beside most of the main courts. Every other school I’d ever seen was lucky to have four courts, a chain linked fence, and a bench to seat two or four people.

  "Macy," said Coach Williams. "I want you and Aribella to warm each other up. We're going to work on doubles in ten minutes. Use court three."

  Macy was the team’s number two and I was number one, much to everyone’s frustration. The team rankings were decided by a round-robin tournament we played during tryouts. The top twelve girls earned a spot on the team, but only the top six were guaranteed to play in every match. Macy was a senior, and had expected to be the team’s number one for her whole high school career.

  Macy was short with huge boobs that no sports bra could fully contain. I secretly thought they might actually add some pop to her follow through with all the shifting weight. She had the kind of face teachers seemed to love. Cute and innocent. Shimmering lip gloss and perfectly straight hair with an easy smile. Like most of the kids in Belvedere, she saved the sneers and glares for people like me. I doubt any teacher had ever seen how nasty she really was.

  Court three was relatively isolated because the utility shed and the practice wall separated it from the rest of the courts.

  “Mind if we do warm up volleys first?” I asked. Macy had made no secret of hating me, but I was determined to ignore the hostility. Maybe if I just pretended nothing was wrong for long enough, she’d give up trying to make my life miserable. Besides, tennis was still my best shot at a scholarship. If I didn’t get a scholarship, I wasn’t going to college. It was that simple.

  She looked at me, an idea forming in her eyes, then nodded.

  We set up inside the service boxes, just a few steps away from the net on either side. I fed a ball into her, starting slow and soft while we were still warming up. Instead of preparing for a volley, Macy loaded her body like she was getting ready to crush a ball from the baseline as hard as she could. I was standing so close to the net that I only had time to start flinching back before the ball came rocketing straight toward my face.

  It smacked into my eye and ricocheted comically high like she had slammed the ball into a solid brick wall instead of my face. I started to say I thought I was okay, and then a wave of dizziness made my legs crumple from under me. Maci walked slowly over to my side of the net and looked down at me without a shred of regret in her features.

  “Maybe you’ll have a harder time cheating on your next boyfriend with that ugly black eye,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  She made a disgusted noise, then rolled her eyes before raising her voice and lacing it with sugary sweet concern. “Coach! Aribella needs one of the trainers!”

  I was sitting in the trainer’s building with a ice compress held to my eye half an hour later. There were a few kids from the track team getting stretched on massage-style benches, and a few others just mulling around. It was crowded, but that wasn’t unusual. Kids who didn’t feel like practicing could fake injuries and spend the afternoon in here. Belvedere’s training center had room for real injuries and for the fakers. I was eventually shuttled through a door to a smaller area with privacy curtains. It looked surprisingly similar to an actual doctor’s office, but I guess I shouldn’t have been shocked. Belvedere probably had more money than it knew what to do with.

  They sat me down on a half-reclined bed while one of the trainers called my parents. I’d only been sitting there a few minutes when I heard a commotion. Someone was gasping for breath and the voices of adults were ordering kids to clear the way. The door to the area I was in swung open, and I just barely caught a glimpse of Zach being hurried to one of the beds beside me. I stared toward the gap in the curtains that surrounded my bed in confusion and concern. He had actually looked scared.

  I started to get off my bed when I remembered everything he had caused. Zach was the reason I was sitting in this bed with a welt the size of a tennis ball forming around my eye. Whatever Maci was talking about, I was somehow sure it was Zach’s fault. It almost didn’t surprise me. If a rumor had spread that I cheated on Brent, it might explain the extreme exile everyone had seemed to agree to put me in. It was as blatant a lie as a lie could be, but I wouldn’t have put it past Zach for a second to make it up.

  Still, I could hear him in the bed right beside mine. If the curtain weren't between us, I would've been able to almost reach out and touch him. He was wheezing while the trainers tried to calm him down.

  “Deep breaths, Zach. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Come on. Easy does it. Jared is grabbing your inhaler from the office. Just hold on a minute.”

  Zach’s only response was to wheeze in a few more ragged breaths.

  I waited in my bed, annoyingly anxious for him. I should’ve probably been hoping his throat would close up for good. Maybe then he wouldn’t be able to ruin anyone else’s life. Instead, I could only remember the way his eyes had fixed on me as he sang at the battle of the bands.

  My broken girl…

  I was broken. Something in his eyes said he knew that. But I knew he wasn’t as whole as he wanted everyone to think.

  Eventually, it was just the two of us. My parents were on the way and he was supposed to hang out until one of the trainers’ shift was over and they could drive him home, just to be safe. A few minutes passed before I stood, wincing at the throbbing headache I’d earned from taking ‘keep my eye on the ball’ a little too literally. I stuck the uninjured half of my face into the opening between curtains to his bed.

  “Still alive over there?” I asked in what I hoped was a voice that conveyed you’re still a dick, but that doesn’t mean I want you to drop dead. Yet.

  He was lounging in the bed with his shirt off. I noticed before I'd finished my sentence, and the last word came out somewhere between a gulp and a squeak. He shot me a hateful look. One that managed to make my skin crawl and my belly fill with heat at the same time, like he wanted to do something violent to me, but the kind of violent that happens between bedsheets and without clothes on. Rough. Primal.

  He wasn’t like other boys. No. There was no doubting that.

  “Fuck off, Gardener Girl.”

  I bristled. “There’s nobody around to impress. It’s just me and you. Can you drop the act? Even for a minute? You can’t possibly be as foul as you want me to think.”

  “No. You’re right. I’m worse than you think.”

  I huffed a laugh. “Clearly you don’t know what I think about you, then.”

  “Is there a point to this?” His voice was impatient, and there was something in his expression I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He looked oddly out of his element. Maybe not completely in control for the first time since I’ve seen him.

  I forgot my anger and all the vile things he had already done in the short time I’ve known him. I forgot it all just long enough to feel sympathy. I soften my voice. “Sounded scary. Was that an asthma attack?”

  “You think I have asthma?” he asks incredulously, like even the thought is ridiculous.

  “Either that or you swallowed a hamster.”

  He shakes his head, eyes fixed on a dark gray stain on the curtains to my left. “It’s not like I have asthma. Something must’ve just gotten in me that my body didn’t agree with. Maybe it was Kelly’s tongue.” He adds the last sentence with a defiant look in his eyes. I knew he only said it to hurt me, and it hurt even more because it still worked.

  I didn’t know who Kelly was. Chances are, he didn’t either. He was just proving to me he’s still an asshole. He wasn’t secretly longing after me. The way he sang that song to me didn’t mean anything. He’s just a bully, and he enjoyed making me feel like I was nothing.

  I clenched my teeth together, the sympathy I felt moments ago evaporating.
“Forget it,” I said. “I’m sorry I was dumb enough to care.” I slid the curtain shut and then heard a rustle from his bed.

  “Gardener Girl. Wait.”

  I stopped, but I don’t reach for the curtain. “My name is Aribella,” I said through gritted teeth.

  A pause. Three heartbeats. Four.

  “Aribella,” he said.

  My breath hitched and my stomach tightened into a nervous ball. In a few milliseconds, my brain ran through all the things he could say to take the first step toward undoing the damage he had already done. I’m sorry, would go a long way, for starters. But something sweet would be best. How he just couldn’t help himself around me. How he wanted to be better, but I made him crazy. Even that would only be a start, but I wanted that first step.

  He’s wrong for me in so many ways, but I couldn’t deny there’s the most bizarre sense that if he would only let his guard down, we’d get along. Like there’s a guy inside that hateful costume he wears who would be perfect for me.

  “Stay away from Brent,” he said finally, and my heart sank.

  “Fuck you, Zach.” Tears welled in my eyes as I bit out the words. I was never one to swear often, and the words tasted sour in my mouth, but I meant them. He was selfish and he was cruel. Every time I talked to him, he made it a little easier to ignore the irrational fluttering in my stomach when I saw him.

  “If you want to fuck me, you’ll have to ask more nicely.”

  I groaned in disgust. It was a testament to how hateful he was, because the idea of sleeping with him really did make my stomach turn in the wrong ways. He had a body made for sin and eyes that could seduce the clothes off of a nun, but my pride would never survive sleeping with him. He had walked all over me. Marked me, in his own strange way. Sleeping with him would be defeat. He and I both knew it. I would be a trophy on his shelf and nothing more.

  “If I ask nicely for you to stay out of my life, will that work?”

  “Trying never hurt.”

  "Then, please. Please. Forget me and forget whatever it is that has you so fixated on making my life miserable.”

  “Forget you? I don’t think you understand how this is going to end, Gardener Girl. It’s going to end when I get a taste of you. Something tells me I’m not going to forget that, either.”

  I swallow, throat suddenly dry. Why can’t my body and my brain be on the same page, for once? Why should the brooding darkness of Zach Thornwood make me want to swoon while the clean, all-American-boy Brent had left me feeling bored and detached?

  My body didn’t get to make the rules, though, so I shoved down all the swirling warmth in my stomach and wore a cold, icy glare. “If you want something to remember. Remember that you ruined any chance you might have had with me already.”

  “We’ll see,” he said, and I didn’t like the knowing glint in his eyes, like he knew something I didn’t.

  10

  Zach

  Gardener Girl was due to show up for her first day as my muse any minute. I wore a boot around my ankle, and it hadn’t even seemed painful to walk on, but I figured using the crutches for a few days would help remind Gardener Girl what was at stake if she tried to pull out of the deal. I also wore a bandage over the thickest part of the cut just above my eyebrow.

  She had always held part of herself back from me. Whatever spark let her look into my cold eyes and keep from flinching away still burned in her. I could chain her up, blackmail her, chase her halfway across the country, and she still wouldn’t break, not completely. It was that strength that drew me to her. That same quality I saw in myself.

  You could batter us, bruise us, abuse us. You could do what you wanted, but we wouldn’t quit. Somebody else would, but not us. It was the tentative thread that held us together, despite all our differences. It was also the thing I wanted to destroy, because it was natural. I’d been trying to destroy myself for years now, and she brought that same natural reflex out of me.

  We had three tour buses. One was for the band. One was for the audio guys we brought to help set up for every concert; they knew exactly where we liked our levels and kept me from having to fuck around with some of the amateurs our venues had on standby for shows. The third bus was for groupies and tagalongs. I never gave women more than a night, but Brent and Taylor would sometimes drag a girl or even a group of girls along for a few days, even weeks. Eventually they'd be cut loose and given money to catch a flight back home.

  Our life didn’t lend itself to commitments. A new week, a new city. A new year, a new country. Anything good we might come across couldn’t last, so we learned to grab at what we could and to let it pass when the time came. We were wanderers.

  I planned to offer Gardener Girl a spot on the groupie bus. She had asked for her own bus, but that was ridiculous. The money for another bus and full-time driver would’ve been a drop in the bucket, but she didn’t have to know that. I’d made sure the wording on the contract was ambiguous enough to hold up if she really pitched a fit about it.

  We were holed up in a hotel, like usual. I was sprawled out on a couch in the lobby. A few people had already asked me for selfies or autographs, but I never minded that. Brent and Taylor always acted like fans were pests, and they got pissy if people asked them to sign something or pose. Whatever part of my brain made me default to asshole in every other facet of my life didn’t seem to click on when it came to fans. I liked them. And I liked that I liked them, as if that made any sense. I didn’t have to force myself to act civil around them.

  Aribella walked into the lobby with a single, black suitcase on wheels. I sat up a little straighter, then forced myself to relax. It was just Gardener Girl, I reminded myself. She was going to be my pet project for a few days, maybe a few weeks. I doubted I would need the full six months to break through her resistance.

  One fuck was all I needed. I was sure of it. It’d be like breaking a spell. The illusion would be shattered, and I could get rid of the nagging, old regret for how things had turned out between us. She’d be lame in bed and the chemistry I always felt around her would fizzle and dry up. She would pout after me like some lovesick, overly attached girlfriend after one night. Spell broken. Simple as that.

  She slowed a little when she took in the size of the lobby. I noticed it for the first time then, too, as if only being able to see the details when I imagined how they’d seem to her eyes. Marble polished to such a mirror finish that you could see your reflection in it. Massive pillars that stretched up to a huge vaulted ceiling. Mahogany desks for the employees that wound around the whole area, and leather couches with elaborate armrests sitting on top of huge rugs.

  It was ridiculously fancy, but that had become the norm, and I hardly noticed anymore.

  It took her a minute to spot me. When she did, I could’ve sworn I saw her set her jaw, like she was about to jump out of an airplane.

  I enjoyed watching the emotions play across her face as she approached. Apprehension. Fear. Doubt. Excitement. I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoyed toying with Gardener Girl. Everyone else in my life had always just rolled over for me. They fed me what they thought I wanted because they wanted me. It was still that way, from my manager to my assistants to the nameless roadies I’d use to quench my lust from time to time. They all felt lifeless. Like little balls of clay that refused to take their own shape. They just waited for me to mold them into whatever I needed.

  Not Gardener Girl. Never her. She was the one who fought back. She was the clay that just wouldn’t take the shape I wanted, no matter how hard I squeezed. Maybe I’d deformed the shape she tried to take through my efforts, but she still wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of submitting. Until she did, I wouldn’t stop.

  She stopped a few feet away from me, expression tense.

  “I won’t bite,” I said, motioning for her to come closer.

  She didn’t move. She opened her mouth like she was about to say something, then snapped it shut, letting her eyes fall to the floor. It gave me a moment to t
ake her in. Dark purple hair that caught every bit of the chandelier lights, glossy and slick. I thought about how it would feel cool to the touch, almost insubstantial until I grabbed a fistful of it and jerked her head back so her soft lips were mine for the taking. Even when she couldn’t meet my gaze, her eyes held the same defiant glint I remembered from high school. The biggest change was her body. She had grown some very pleasant curves in her hips and chest since then. They were hips that would make a good handhold while I took her from behind. A chest that would bounce nicely for me every time I pounded into her.

  “Can’t believe you’re doing this?” I guessed when she seemed determined to stand there awkwardly without saying anything.

  She looked back up. Blue eyes. Expressive and hateful. “Something like that,” she said.

  “Well,” I said, popping up from the couch as cheerily as I could with my aching ankle. I was wearing a boot on it and had to use crutches for the next two weeks. My face throbbed, too, but I was used to it already, even if it did make me crave pills like there was no tomorrow. They had tried to talk me out of doing the next two shows, but I could easily pop a stool on stage and give the show an acoustic treatment. I wasn’t giving up my crack. Not for a grisly cut on my face and a busted ankle. “Let me show you where you’ll be staying.”

  She watched me warily as I hobbled on crutches out to the parking lot and headed for the busses. The groupies were already loading suitcases on the groupie wagon. Taylor was currently dragging along two twin sisters—the disgusting fuck. There were also two women who were dating some of the audio guys.

  “Is that one mine?” she asked, pointing to the middle bus where no one had started loading in yet.

  “That one is for the band,” I said, trying not to grin as I waited for her to realize she wasn’t going to get everything exactly how she had wanted.

  She looked at the front bus, where a few suitcases were piled outside and two of the audio guys were standing outside, talking.