Hate at First Sight

by Penelope Bloom

  A crazy fan for T.S. Barnes is another matter entirely. I’ll never admit it to any living soul as long as I live, but I put some of myself in that book. Maybe more than a little. Hell, I might have even enjoyed it in a few places. So I scan the email with more eagerness than I’d like to admit.

  Dear T.S.,

  You probably get this kind of email all the time, so please don't even feel like you need to reply or anything. I just wanted to let you know that, well, I basically had a fangasm all over your book—like that scene in Ghostbusters when they are cleaning up after the… Yeah, T.M.I., I know. In all seriousness, your voice is unique. I don't know how else to put it. When your voice came through it was like nothing I've ever read. I could feel every single emotion and see every detail.

  Anyway, I’m going to step away from my computer before I admit to anything else embarrassing, like how many times I’ve already read your book. Orrrr the fact that I kind of plan on making a little shrine for it in the center of my bookshelf. Or even how I am too embarrassed to review it on my blog because I won’t be able to stop from dropping all professional pretense and just typing a three page long, “Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”.

  P.S. Your newsletters have your personal address at the bottom! Most authors change that to a P.O. box or something to protect their privacy.

  P.S.S. We live super close. Like *really* close. So if you ever need a jump start on your car from a crazy fan or some sugar or whatever, just shoot me an email! I’m kidding. Unless you actually need anything, then you can definitely email me.

  I slowly close the laptop with raised eyebrows and an odd sense of… something swirling in my chest. I'm afraid to call it pride because I've met crazy. I've fucked crazy. And I’m pretty sure I just got an email from crazy. Still, it’s the first real praise I’ve read for something I wrote that I feel is from me. The real me.

  I throw back the last of my beer and take one final look at my laptop. Scorn rises up in me to push back any good feelings the email conjured up. Have I really lost it enough that a single email from a fan has me thinking I’ve accomplished something?

  All I need to do is look around at the ruins of my life to get a crystal clear view of exactly how far I've made it. I'm dressed like a drunken lumberjack, sprawled out on the couch in my dead parents' house, hiding from the world that is quickly forgetting me, all while getting sappy over a single fucking email. Yeah. I've come really far… just not in the direction most people plan on going.

  3

  Lindsey

  Brooke and Amelia sit with me at our scratched up kitchen table. If someone looked in the window at this very moment, they would probably think we were grieving the loss of a close family member--or maybe getting ready to perform some kind of satanic ritual--from the dark looks on our faces.

  “Maybe he just forgot,” suggests Amelia after what feels like thirty minutes of silence.

  All our eyes are on the same thing. The flowery, one hundred percent cotton paper pressed with gold-gilded lettering. A wedding invitation from my Ryan, my ex-fiancé.

  “No way he forgot,” Brooke says. “That’s your venue, the one you guys were planning to have your wedding at. He fucking did that just to piss you off, I know it.” If Amelia is the sweet and innocent one of us, then Brooke is the enforcer. She’s pretty when she sleeps, but as soon as she wakes up, she works her face into a permanent don’t fuck with me expression, that may or may not be the cause of her being single at age twenty-six, despite the enormous draw of getting to live in a house full of three brokeass women who can barely pay rent. On second thought, maybe it’s not her resting bitch face that is keeping the guys away.

  Brooke presses her lips together until they make a single, stern line. “He is trying to get under your skin. That fucktoad.”

  I try not to grin. Brooke’s vulgar vocabulary is robust, but I've learned not to laugh, even at her most creative or surprising turns of phrase because she can just as quickly focus her anger on me when she's really worked up. "So the best thing for me to do is ignore it. I don't want to give him what he wants," I say.

  “Or you could go and eat all the expensive wedding food,” suggests Amelia. “There might even be crab cakes.”

  “Crab cakes are not the end-all-be-all of cuisine, Meels,” I say. She had them one time when I got my first deposit from the ads on the blog and I was feeling optimistic about our financial future. The three of us went to a nice seafood restaurant and I thought we’d have to tie Amelia down to keep her from storming the kitchen for seconds and thirds of the crab cakes. Now I’m not entirely sure if it’s just a running joke to her, or if she really dreams about crab cakes floating on puffy clouds every night.

  “Agree to disagree,” she says, eyes distant and almost dreamy.

  “Focus!” Brooke snaps. “We’re not ignoring this shitpiss asshole’s invitation, first of all.”

  “We?” I ask, eyes scanning the invitation again and confirming that I was the only one invited.

  Brooke plows on, ignoring me. “And we’re not going to go there to eat the food, crab cakes or not.”

  Amelia opens her mouth to add something, but Brooke doesn’t stop to let her.

  “We’re going to sabotage it,” she says in such a low, evil whisper that even I’m a little surprised at her depravity. Brooke can get overly protective, but sabotaging a wedding—asshole ex or not—is beyond even her usual level of twisted.

  “No,” I say. “Not a chance. Ryan broke things off with me. He didn’t kill my puppy or poison me. Guys are allowed to not like me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Brooke says.

  Adorably, Amelia nods her head, eyebrows furrowed.

  “I appreciate it,” I say with a sigh. The truth is that I want to do something dumb and crazy like sabotaging his wedding. If only because it would calm the wild, confusing anger and shame I feel inside. Amelia’s role is to be the sweet, innocent one of the family and Brook’s role is to be the enforcer… Mine is to be the voice of reason, even if I hardly feel like it lately.

  I stand suddenly, going to the fridge to grab a box of wine. Time for some liquid oblivion. “Anyone else want some?”

  One box of wine and a few hours later, my head is spinning. Amelia fell asleep on the couch after a single glass, and Brooke is baking cookies—if she's ever on edge, I know I'll find her in the kitchen. The funny part is that she never even eats what she bakes. She just throws it in a Tupperware and forgets about it. Unfortunately for my waistline, I don't usually forget when there are cookies sitting around.

  I stumble to my room, brushing my shoulder against the wall as I try to keep from tripping over a cord or a table leg. There’s a notification on my computer. A new email. Several new emails, in fact. I scan through the list with eyes that seem to want to go in different directions until I see one from T.S. Barnes. I click it immediately, feeling a touch of my drunken haze slip away with my excitement.

  Lindsey,

  Thanks for the email.

  T.S. Barnes

  The email is still followed by a personal address, a sure sign that T.S. didn’t even read my email. I snap my laptop shut as an alcohol-induced idea materializes in my head. You want to blow off my email, T.S.? Well, maybe you should've been nice to the crazy fan who knows your address. I pull out my phone and take a picture of the address, stuffing it in my pocket before I try to walk outside as casually as I can.

  “You’re not driving,” snaps Brooke.

  “You’re right. I’m just going for a walk. Maybe even a pee in the woods. Is that allowed?”

  She scowls over her bowl of cookie batter. “It’s getting dark, Lindsey.”

  I stagger forward, the half box of wine I drank doing the talking for me. “Then I’ll keep my eyes open real big, okay? Sheesh,” I say, opening my eyes as wide as I can. I lose a little tiny bit of credibility when I run into the door as I turn around.

  “You have to open doors to get through them,” Brooke mutters.

&nbs
p; I wave my hands in annoyance over my head and yank the door open.

  It’s chilly outside, but I’m too stubborn to go back in and get my jacket. I plug T.S. Barnes’ address in my phone and tell it to give me walking directions. I’m surprised when I see it’s just a little over a mile away, but the direction is uphill. We live on a wooded mountain, but our house is near the base of the mountain and there has never been any real reason for me to go anywhere but down the mountain and toward town. As a kid, we’d play around in the woods some, but I think we all felt creeped out by the idea of going up the mountain where the foliage and trees get so thick you can’t see the house.

  It's only a few minutes before I've walked beyond the point I'm even vaguely familiar with, and I don't think it has anything to do with my swimming head. I nearly faceplant several times when my feet get caught on roots and branches, but by some miracle, I make it through the thickest patch of trees relatively unscathed. I'm sure if I wandered the dirt road that winds between all the houses on the mountain, I'd find a path that would take me to her house, but in my drunken brain, it makes a whole lot more sense to just walk in a straight line to it, trees or not.

  I glance down at my phone after a while and see I'm supposedly only a tenth of a mile away from T.S. Barnes' house. I look around, not seeing anything but trees and more trees and the ever-steepening hill, but push forward anyway. I finally lose my footing this time, tumbling down into a bed of dead leaves and scraggly vines that latch onto me. I try to tug my arms and legs free but wince as I feel tiny thorns all along the vines slice through my clothes and prick my skin in dozens of places at once.

  The pain goes a long way toward sobering me up—that and the maybe not-so-crazy fear that this will be how I die, trapped in small vines no thicker than the cord of my phone charger. I’m not even drunk enough on boxed wine for how pathetic this is to go over my head. I thrash and make a sound like a wounded animal for a while until I realize I have my keys in my pocket. With a little effort, I’m able to saw through the vines and break free, but not without a body full of stinging cuts and a hair full of dead leaves for my trouble.

  I’m about to check my phone for the direction to his house again when I hear leaves crunching nearby. I look up, eyebrows drawn and heart suddenly pounding. Each surprise pushes the alcohol more and more out of my system. I’m finally sober enough to wonder what the hell I’m doing trekking through the woods to a stranger’s house over an email.

  The bushes in front of me are parted by two tattooed hands. A man steps through the brush, dusting off his pants. My eyes wander to his long and lean, denim-clad legs. He wears a flannel shirt with half the buttons undone and no shirt beneath despite the chill. My eyes reflexively dart up to his face when I see the hint of the bare skin of his chest, which is covered in two black raven wing tattoos. I'm struck by the strangest sense of familiarity when I see his face.

  “Aren’t you…” I half-whisper.

  “Yeah,” he growls in a voice that’s low and full of a rough, almost sultry rasp. “I’m the guy who owns the cabin you’re creeping around outside of.”

  I open my mouth, holding my hands up as I struggle to think of a way to explain how this isn’t exactly what it looks like. The more I look at him the more sure I am. I came here to find T.S. Barnes, but Chris Savage just busted out of the bushes in front of me. My brain spins while I try to put the pieces of this impossible puzzle together. It’s like getting out of your car on the side of the highway to pee in the woods and seeing Chris Hemsworth come bursting out of a lake.

  “T.S. Barnes?” is all I can manage.

  He wears an expression of bored distance, like this isn’t even the craziest thing a woman has ever tried to do to get close to him—and I doubt it is. It makes me feel silly and stupid, like some kind of lunatic stalker fan. If my stupid mouth could just catch up with my brain, I could explain what’s going on here more coherently, but every time I try to talk it feels like someone stuffed an entire package of cotton balls down my throat.

  I've seen pictures of Chris online, but I assumed no one could actually look so perfect in real life. He looks even taller in person. His hair is cut short and he wears his beard at a length that I just decided is the length all men should wear their beards. It's a little bit past a few days scruff. And his eyes… Even in the weak moonlight, I can see what a perfect brown they are, deep and rich in a way that makes me feel warm despite the chill in the air. The only thing I see now that didn't translate in the pictures online, is the pain in his face. It's not evident at first glance, but there's something haunted in his expression that makes me suddenly more curious about why he came out here. What are you running from?

  He steps closer to me, ignoring my question about T.S. Barnes and reaching to pluck at my shredded clothes. It’s only when I look down that I realize my blouse tore so badly that half of my bra is showing. I make a mostly futile effort to cover myself, but I feel silly when I look up and see that he doesn’t appear to even be thinking of sneaking a look. Of course not. I’m just an average girl in a below average situation who writes book reviews on a blog for a few thousand readers. He’s had the most beautiful women in the world throw themselves at his feet. I’m like dollar store mac and cheese to him.

  “Let me make something clear,” he says roughly. “I don’t give a shit how you found where I am or why you’re here. I don’t give a shit about you. But I don’t need the dead body of a drunken stalker on my property, so you can come inside and clean the dirt out of those cuts before they get infected.”

  "I'm not drunk," I say indignantly as if that is the most offensive thing he just said. “And I really doubt I’m going to die from a few cuts.”

  He presses a forefinger to my chest with barely any force, but the slight loss of balance sends my arms cartwheeling. I reach desperately for something to stop my fall but he takes a step back, watching with dead eyes as I crash down on my ass.

  “Drunk,” he says.

  I blow out an annoyed breath, getting to my feet and mentally willing the last of the alcohol to get out of my system. “Yeah, well maybe you need to get over yourself. I didn’t come here to see you. I wanted to see T.S. Barnes. She’s an author I…” I lose steam mid-sentence as I realize the reason I came to see Barnes wasn’t really that far from drunken stalker fan either.

  Chris makes a face I can't read but quickly smoothes his expression back to what appears to be his resting state, something between bedroom eyes and a look like he's so bored with the world he could fall asleep at a moment's notice.

  He walks toward his cabin like he expects me to follow without question. His assumption irritates me enough that I cross my arms and stand where I am for a few stubborn seconds until I realize he’s not even going to look back to see if I’m following. I swallow my pride and half-jog to catch up with him. Every step makes my clothes rustle against my cuts.

  I would've expected a superstar like Chris Savage to live in some kind of sprawling mansion cabin with huge windows and maybe a helicopter pad, but it's small and rustic. Somehow that makes me like him--just a little, though. The idea of celebrities who wouldn't survive a week without all their money and fancy houses always seems sad to me, so Chris living here at least proves he isn't all about his money.

  “So,” I say, letting my nerves do the talking instead of my brain. “The whole cabin in the woods thing. Are you trying to channel your inner tortured artist to write the next masterpiece on the art of screwing?” I ask. I start to regret my own words half-way through, but I push on anyway because he may look gorgeous, but his personality is clearly poisonous. That, and despite my best efforts, I'm still a good way closer to drunk than sober. Either way, I don't need to pamper this man's ego. If anything, I'll be doing the world a favor if I can knock him down a notch or two, better yet—a few hundred notches.

  He gives me a look that could ignite rain-soaked wood. “Maybe I’m channeling my serial killer thing, and you just made my night easier by wandering
into my lair.”

  I can’t tell if he’s trying to make a joke because he shows no sign of smiling. He just rips the door open and stalks inside, heading straight for the kitchen where he digs beneath the sink for a few seconds, and then comes up with a bottle of whiskey.

  “Uh,” I say, completely confused. Wasn’t he just giving me shit for being drunk?

  “Get in the bathtub and pour this on your cuts. I don’t have any peroxide.”

  “Oh,” I say. “And the bathtub is…”

  He sighs as if I should know the layout of his house already. My eyes wander across his living room, taking in the mess. He has clothes, probably dirty, hanging on the edge of the couch and some discarded on the floor. There's a small stack of empty beer bottles beside his couch, and I'm surprised to see there's no TV anywhere I can spot. What does he do? Stare at the wall, get drunk, and then throw his clothes on the ground?

  “Bathtub,” he says,” Pointing to a door. He roughly hands me the whiskey and then turns his back on me to head for the fridge.

  I take the bottle and go into his bathroom, which thankfully seems to be the one place he doesn't trash. The sink is actually clean, and the toilet seems to be too. Just fifty strikes against you, and one or two strikes for you so far.

  I pull back the shower curtain and glance back toward the door. I double check that I have the door locked before carefully stripping out of my clothes and underwear. I wince in the mirror at the sight. There are dozens of cuts that are too shallow to ooze blood, but it doesn't stop them from burning like a collection of the world's worst paper cuts.