Hate at First Sight

by Penelope Bloom

  I have to admit I might have spent more time researching Chris Savage’s six-pack in paparazzi photos and magazine shoots than I did studying his past. It’s just eye candy though. It’s not like I’d ever, ever be interested in a guy like him on an emotional level. It only took a few minutes of reading to gather that he has probably slept with more women than any man in history. Yeah. I’ll give that a big, fat, no thanks. I’ve had my share of jerks, chief of which was the jerk I was dumb enough to get engaged to. Thankfully that all went up in a flaming pile of “nope” last year, but I’m still dealing with the emotional aftermath of that one.

  I shake my head at myself and laugh. Here I am mentally passing on a guy who would probably take a look at my knobby knees, flat chest, and plain features for a microsecond before wiping me from his memory.

  For the first time since I started doing my reviews, I open up a word document and start to write a bad review for a book out of spite. Maybe it’s because he’s such a big name and I know my review won’t even be a blip on his radar. It could even be that I’m acting out for feeling like my readers forced me into writing a review of his book. Hell if I know, but the truth would be too irritating to write. Yes, his book is actually compelling. On the surface, it is as advertised: a guide to having the perfect sexual experience. But if you read between the lines, it's also a guide to having better, more meaningful relationships and how that connection can also enhance the sexual experience. I can see why so many people have taken to calling it The Sex Bible. I initially thought they were just referencing the complete collection of all things sex in one place. After reading the book, I think many of them are probably talking more about the message between the lines that speak to a better way to be with a romantic partner, and not just in bed.

  It was refreshing and eye-opening, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I read it. But, for some reason, I still can't put my finger on why, I just can't bring myself to write one of the millions of glowing reviews that are already out there for the book.

  I've prided myself on always being honest with my audience. Always truthful, even if I have a friendship or professional relationship with the author, I don't pull punches. So maybe they can forgive me just this once. Only one dishonest review if for no other reason than it feels good to take a stab at the invincible Chris Savage, even if it'll be less than a pinprick to a man with an ego his size. Not that someone of his caliber is ever going to hear about a review from me, anyway.

  I grab a box of chardonnay from the fridge. Yes, I said a box. I know some bloggers are rolling in money, but I, unfortunately, fall into the other group, which barely makes enough to scrape by. Drinking the cheapest of the cheap wine is just one of many sacrifices I make. It seems like nothing compared to living with my sisters and trying to pay my lion's share of the bills with an unsteady, unstable, and very uncertain income source like blogging. My older sister, Brooke, was never a good enough student to give college a serious thought, even if she could've afforded it. So she waits tables at one of the few small restaurants in town. My little sister, Amelia, is a freelance hairdresser who does house calls. We live in a small enough town that she gets a decent amount of work just from word of mouth. Unfortunately, my dad's medical bills make it all seem like pennies. His insurance covers the brunt of it, but he still requires full-time professional care from a nurse and lives in a nursing home. We tried to get him to stay with us, but his insurance didn't cover hospice, so the only way we could even begin to afford his care was to have him live in the nursing home, no matter how much that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. We go to visit as much as we can, but he hardly talks anymore, so it's getting harder to see him when all we can do is squeeze his hand and tell him we love him. Still, we all do what we can, but the weight of fear never really goes completely away, except when I'm deep into a good ole box of wine, that is.

  I dump the water out of a little blue mug someone left out in the sink and splash a hefty serving of wine into it before heading back to the privacy of my room and my computer. I open a word document and take a long look at the blank page while I try to decide if I can live with myself for writing a fake review just to spite a man I've never met and in all likelihood will never meet.

  Yes. The answer is yes.

  I take a big gulp of wine, barely noticing how bad it tastes and start my review.

  You’re Fucking Wrong by Chris Savage is Fucking Garbage

  Okay, maybe that’s a little too harsh. I hold the delete key down for a little and try again.

  You’re Fucking Wrong. Yes, you are, Chris Savage.

  I tap my chin a few times and decide it’ll do for now. I’ll give it a once-over before I hit submit and let creativity have another shot at striking. With the title out of the way, I start my review:

  I said it. I didn't like the book. I should probably board up my windows and take some self-defense classes before the crowds of Chris Savage fangirls come with pitchforks and torches, but I think I'll just make myself a tidy little bonfire with my copy of his book and keep warm instead.

  Seriously, people? It's the twenty-first century, and we're making a book about sex the cultural phenomenon of the decade? Am I alone in wishing we could go back to somewhat more noble things, like exploring the moon or—

  A knock at my door steals my focus.

  “You’re disrupting my creative genius!” I shout with a heavy tone of warning.

  The door opens anyway, letting me know it's my little sister, Amelia. If it were Brooke, she wouldn't have even bothered knocking. Amelia though? She's too adorable for her own good, and no one ever has it in their heart to get mad at her. The result is a twenty-one-year-old girl with no real concept of boundaries.

  She does a little jumping skip-step before plopping down on my bed cross-legged with a grin that dimples one of her cheeks.

  I raise my eyebrows, my annoyance already fading because she's Amelia, and somehow that earns her an endless supply of patience and forgiveness. I stopped trying to figure out why a long time ago. All I know is trying to stay mad or even get mad at her is about as hard as being angry at a puppy. She has reddish blonde hair, the heart-shaped face of a pixie with a pointed chin, a cute upturned nose, and big blue eyes. I'm only four years older than her, and Brooke is just a year and a half older than me, but we both had to step in to help raise Amelia. Our dad never had time between working two jobs and trying to keep our old house from falling apart. So I often waver between seeing her as my little sister and more like a daughter, especially after our dad got hurt a few years back and had to retire.

  It was an unspoken thing between Brooke and me, but we somehow knew it was essential to keep Amelia protected from it all. She never really understood the financial stress or the burdens on all of us. We shouldered it, and I think we all took a strange kind of solace in being the barrier between her and the ugly side of the world. So even now when I see her carefree smile and dimpled cheek, a warm happiness spreads through my whole body that makes it impossible to be annoyed with her for barging in.

  “Yes?” I ask with a smirk.

  “I have a request,” she says, holding up her thumb and forefinger and squinting to make sure she has the size of her request right. “Just a tiny one though. Promise!”

  “I’m listening…”

  “Okay well, there’s this salon training school thing. It’s called Evo, like Evolution? Get it?”

  I try not to roll my eyes, nodding while a growing sense of dread builds in the pit of my stomach. I can practically see dollar signs floating around my little sister like an aura because if there's one thing that stretches our finances more than anything, it's how we spoil her.

  "Well, they have this one year program where you can get fully trained to be a hairdresser in a fancy salon. The whole deal. If I just did it for a year, I'd be able to work in a hair salon and take on more clients. More tips. All the good stuff. I'd be able to help with the bills more," she adds hopefully.

  I work my l
ips to the side, thinking. On the one hand, I hate saying no to her. On the other, it would be a big help if she could pay her full share of the rent and bills. "You haven't mentioned how much it costs, Meels. That scares me."

  “Twenty thousand?” she squeaks, fingers digging into the bedsheets as she winces to hear my response.

  My heart falls because no matter how much I love my little sister or how bad I may want to, it's an amount of money we can't swing. "That's… That's a lot of money,” I say slowly.

  "I know, but maybe if we just used the credit cards, we could pay them off when I finish."

  I shake my head. I don't want to go into the details with her because I don't want her to know how tight things really are. I can't tell her that we're already five thousand in debt and our credit is shot from years of struggling. I definitely can't tell her we usually have about a hundred dollars left every month after the essentials, and most of that gets eaten up by any unexpected expenses--there are always unexpected expenses. "I'll take a look at the budget," I say finally, because I'm too chicken to see the hurt on Amelia's face if I tell her the truth. Telling her I'll take a look at the budget is my fallback when there's no right answer, but it always seems to do the trick.

  Amelia's eyes light up, and she bites her lip. "You will?" she asks.

  “I’ll look,” I say carefully. “No promises.”

  She squeals and jumps off the bed to hug me tightly, blasting me with the flowery smell of her shampoo. I can’t help smiling a little as I hug her back and remind her to close the door on her way out.

  I look back at my blog post once she’s gone and sigh. My heart isn’t in it right now. Writing a post like this is a money grab. It’s controversial and more likely to get shares because it will piss some of my readers off and they’ll disagree. They’ll want to talk about it with their friends and team up to tell me how wrong I am. It’s not the kind of blogger I wanted to be when I started out, but money is tight, and I have to do whatever it takes to bring more traffic to the blog. Even sacrificing my integrity.

  I sigh, minimizing the word document and check my email. I see a newsletter from T.S. Barnes, who skyrocketed to the top of my favorite author list when I read her debut novel last week. It is technically a romance book, but it doesn’t follow the standard rules of romance. After reading hundreds, and probably thousands of romances, it was breathtaking to see what she did with a genre I thought I knew. On a sudden whim, driven by the desire to do something genuine instead of the farce I’m creating for my blog, I click reply on the newsletter and start typing out an email to T.S. Barnes. That she probably won’t ever read, but I need to do something good to distract myself from the sound of my life crumbling down around me.

  2

  Chris

  I sit with my leg kicked up on the armrest of the couch and my eyes closed, wishing I could close my ears as easily too. Alec, my agent, is sitting across from me--in person--for the first time in months because he finally managed to track down the address of my cabin. Wouldn't have been that hard if he wasn't a dumbass. It's my parents' cabin. My recently dead parents. I'd have at least put it on a top five list of places to check for me, but then again, I’m not a dumbass.

  Enter Alec.

  I guess he was tired of me ignoring his calls, and he apparently misses hearing the sound of his own voice a lot, because the asshole hasn’t shut up since I reluctantly let him in.

  “...millions, Chris. You realize that? It’s not just your ass on the line if you don’t honor the contract with them. We promised them a book. That means when you decided to say fuck it and live on this fucking mountain, you were fucking me over too. But I don't expect that to mean much to you really."

  I crack my eyes open when he doesn’t speak for several moments. He must want me to say something. Too bad for him I couldn’t give a shit what he wants. I get off the couch and go to the kitchen for a cigarette until I remember I quit. Well, if running out of cigarettes and being too lazy to buy more for so long that you kick the habit counts, at least. I settle for a beer instead, snagging one from the fridge and deliberately neglecting to offer Alec’s skinny ass one. I flick the cap off with a calloused thumb. Life out here is good for making thick calluses, it turns out.

  I guess fucking fangirls and riding shotgun in private jets doesn’t exactly compare to chopping firewood and doing repairs on this old and busted up cabin.

  Like usual, my memories of the whirlwind of fame leave a sour taste in my mouth. My modus operandi has always been to do whatever feels like the biggest “fuck you” to everyone and everything at any given moment. Pretty simple philosophy, really, especially when you’re so angry that it feels like there’s acid in your stomach and fire running through your veins. For a while, partying and being the world’s favorite asshole felt like the answer. I’d think about how my parents and my perfect sister must be seeing my face on gossip magazines while they waited to buy their groceries, or how they’d have to field questions from their friends about me and my latest scandal. It felt good, in a twisted and fucked up kind of way, at least. Like scratching a mosquito bite until it bleeds—at least it doesn’t itch anymore.

  And then… My eyes wander past Alec to the window by the front door that overlooks the hill where I buried my parents. Yeah, boo-fucking-hoo for me. I dared the universe to give me its worst, and go figure, it has a nastier sense of humor than me. A car accident, of all things. I didn’t even believe it at first because my parents always drove like they were ninety years old, and on their way back from church with a few cartons of eggs and two bowling balls in the back seat. “No sense hurrying to an accident,” was one of my dad’s favorite lines. It still feels weird to think about them with anything but the twisted, black anger I carried for so long.

  Old memories. Old pains. No sense dwelling on it now, except I decided to come to the cabin they were living in when they died, where I have nothing else to do but dwell. Maybe Alec isn’t the only dumbass in the room after all.

  I run a hand through my hair and sink back down on the couch, glaring at Alec in the vague hope that maybe I can scare him away, along with the rest of the world.

  “The contract,” he says, not deterred in the least.

  He wears thick-rimmed glasses and converse shoes with skinny jeans, along with one of those dumb square ties. He could’ve just walked out of a cell phone commercial trying to target “hip teens,” but I knew him before all the money from my book deal lined his pockets. Unfortunately, he is the same, squirrely kid, so I can’t even say money changed him. The only difference is that he pays out the ass now to buy clothes that look beat up instead of just buying cheap clothes and treating them like shit for a few weeks. He also has an irritating habit of not flinching away from me even when I’m at my worst, which is why I guess he’s lasted this long as my agent.

  Alec was made for business, through and through.

  “The contract,” I say in a bored tone. “I don’t want to write their book. They can shove the contract up their asses for all I care.”

  “What about the millions you’ll pay for breaching it if you don’t write the book?”

  “I’ll pay it. The rent here is pretty cheap. I think I’ll manage.”

  Alec shows a rare flicker of anger. Actual anger. “This may not mean anything to you, Chris, but I staked my career on you when I took you on. If I can’t manage to get my client to follow through for one of the most profitable book deals of the century, my reputation is shot. I won’t be able to get work. Does that mean anything to you?” He clamps his mouth shut, nostrils flaring as he watches me for any sign of compassion or sympathy.

  Tough luck, Alec. All the softer emotions were burned out of me a long damn time ago. You want anger? I’m your man. Want sarcasm? Sure, if I’m in the mood. If you have tits and you’re looking for a life-changing experience, well, you’re a few months too late, because the only thing I’ve felt like fucking lately is the world—and not in the literal sense.

 
He makes a disgusted sound and gets up, turning around to point at me before he leaves. “You do realize you’re not the only person in the world who has to go through shit, right?”

  “Fuck you,” I growl.

  He shakes his head and slams the door behind him. I take a swig of my beer and set it roughly on the table, sitting up and grabbing my laptop. The only solace for me since I’ve come up here has come in the most unexpected place I would’ve ever thought. I wrote a romance book. It started as a joke, and then for a while it was yet another metaphorical middle finger, but somewhere along the way, it turned into something else. For a few paragraphs at a time I’d forget to hate everyone and just write. Then it was pages at a time. Then after just a few weeks I’d cleaned up and finished the entire book.

  I’m still not sure why I wrote a romance, of all things. If I want to go all therapist on myself, maybe I’d guess it is because there’s been so much anger in my life that part of my mind was craving something softer. Sounds like bullshit though, even to me. Maybe I just wanted to write a book where people fucked. Hell if I know.

  For a while, it just sat there on my computer collecting electronic dust, because there was no way in hell I wanted to deal with the media firestorm a romance novel by Chris Savage would ignite. It was only when drunk inspiration led me to slap the pen name, T.S. Barnes, on the book that I actually put it out there for the world to see—or at least the small corner of it my romance novel reached. I even hired a personal assistant no one has ever heard of to handle all the behind-the-scenes crap I can't be bothered with. Most days, that includes all things email related, meaning I don't have to keep up with fan emails or anything but the writing. On a whim though, I click on the email account for T.S. Barnes and scan the inbox.

  The first email that catches my eye has the subject line “I feel like a crazy fan for sending this, but…” It’s from “bookwhoresanonymous@gmail.com”. When it comes to my own name, the words “crazy fan” work on me like bug repellant on a mosquito. I never wrote You’re Fucking Wrong to be a masterpiece or to change the world. It was just the best idea I had at the moment to piss off my perfect family. So when people wanted to gush to me about how much they loved the book, I felt like a fraud. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never really drawn a moral line at fraud, but I prefer to do it on purpose instead of by accident.