The Hating Game

by Sally Thorne

  It was like Joshua was sitting at a third chair at our romantic little table, watching, judging. Reminding me of all the things I was missing. When I looked at Danny’s mouth, I begged myself to feel something.

  When the streets get too unfamiliar, I pull over and spend countless minutes battling with my GPS settings, my clumsy fingers pressing all the wrong buttons, a blue square of paper between my teeth.

  I call the GPS woman the worst names I can think of. I beg her to stop. But she doesn’t. Like a total bitch, she directs me to Josh’s apartment building.

  I’m definitely not going into his building. I’m not totally pathetic. I park on a side street and look up at the building, wondering which glowing square represents him.

  Josh, why have you ruined me?

  My phone buzzes. It’s a name I’ve barely ever seen on my screen.

  Joshua Templeman: Well? Suspense, etc.

  I lock my car and pull my coat tighter as I walk. I try to think of how to reply. I’ve got nothing, frankly. My pride is ridiculously wounded. I should have tried harder tonight. Convinced myself a little more. But I’m so tired of trying.

  I compose a reply. It is an emoticon of a smiling poo. It sums everything up.

  I decide to make one full lap of his apartment building, praying I’m not abducted in the meantime. I don’t need to worry too much. The rain has cleared the streets of all but the most dedicated of stalkers. My red heels echo loudly as I complete my reconnaissance.

  It’s strange, walking along, trying to look at things through someone else’s eyes, let alone your sworn enemy’s. I look at the cracks on the pavement, and wonder if he treads on these when he takes a walk down to that little organic grocery store. I wish I lived near a store like that; maybe I wouldn’t eat so much macaroni and cheese.

  I’ve always suspected people in our lives are here to teach us a lesson. I’ve been sure Josh’s purpose is to test me. Push me. Make me tougher. And to a certain degree it’s been true.

  I pass a pane of glass, and pause, studying my reflection. This dress is as cute as a button. I’ve got color back in my cheeks and lips, most of it cosmetic. I think of the roses. I still can’t reconcile it. They were from Joshua Templeman. He walked into a florist, of his own volition, and wrote three words on a card that changed the state of play.

  He could have written anything. Any of the following would have been perfect.

  I’m sorry. I apologize. I messed up. I’m a horrible asshole. The war is over. I surrender.

  We’re friends now.

  But instead, those three little words. You’re always beautiful. The strangest admission from the last person on earth I’d expect. I let myself think the thought I’ve been blocking so admirably.

  Maybe he’s never hated me. Maybe he’s always wanted me.

  Another chirp from my pocket.

  Joshua Templeman: Where are you?

  Where, indeed. Never you mind, Templeman. I’m skulking behind your building, looking at Dumpsters, trying to decide if that’s your regular cafe across the street or if you ever walk in the tiny park with the little fountain. I’m looking at the way the light shines off the pavement and looking at everything with these brand-new eyes.

  Where am I? I’m on another planet.

  Another text.

  Joshua Templeman: Lucinda. I’m getting annoyed.

  I don’t reply. What’s the use? I need to chalk tonight up as another awkward life experience. I look down the street and can see my car at the end of the block, waiting patiently. A cab cruises past, slows, and when I shake my head it speeds off.

  Is this how stalking begins? I look up and see a moth circling a streetlight. Tonight, I understand that creature completely.

  One pass along the front of his building and I’m done. I’ll turn my head to look at where the mailboxes are. Perhaps I might want to leave him a death threat. Or an anonymous dirty note, wrapped in a pair of underpants the size of a naval flag.

  I lengthen my stride to pass by the front doors, catching a glimpse of the tidy lobby, when I see someone walking ahead of me. A man, tall, beautifully proportioned, hands in pockets, temper and agitation in his stride. The same silhouette I saw on my first day at B&G. The shape I know better than my own shadow.

  Of course, on this new planet I’ve traveled to, there is no one but Josh.

  He glances over his shoulder, no doubt hearing my insanely loud shoes stop in their tracks. Then he looks again. It’s a double take for the record books.

  “I’m out stalking,” I call. It doesn’t come out the way I’d intended. It’s not lighthearted or funny. It comes out like a warning. I’m one scary bitch right now. I hold my hands up to show I’m not armed. My heart is racing.

  “Me too,” he replies. Another cab cruises past like a shark.

  “Where are you actually going?” My voice rings down the empty street.

  “I just told you. I’m going out stalking.”

  “What, on foot?” I come closer by another six paces. “You were going to walk?”

  “I was going to run down the middle of the street like the Terminator.”

  The laugh blasts out of me like bah. I’m breaking one of my rules by grinning at him, but I can’t seem to stop.

  “You’re on foot, after all. Stilts.” He gestures at my sky-high shoes.

  “It gives me a few extra inches of height to look through your garbage.”

  “Find anything of interest?” He strolls closer and stops until we have maybe ten paces between us. I can almost pick up the scent of his skin.

  “Pretty much what I was expecting. Vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, adult diapers.”

  He tips his head back and laughs at the tiny stars visible through the clouds. His amazing, exhilarating laugh is even better than I remembered. Every atom in my body trembles with the need for more. The space between us is vibrating with energy.

  “You can smile.” It’s all I can say.

  His smile is worth a thousand of anyone else’s. I need a photograph. I need something to hold on to. I need this entire bizarre planet to stop spinning so I can freeze this moment in time. What a disaster.

  “What can I say? You’re funny tonight.” It fades off his face as I take a step back.

  “So giving you my address was the only thing I needed to do to find you out here? Maybe I should have given it to you on our first day.”

  “What, so you could run me over with your car?”

  I creep a little closer until we meet under a streetlight. I’ve spent over eight hours looking at him today, but out of the office context, he looks brand-new and strange.

  His hair is shiny and damp and there is a glow on his cheekbones. The cotton T-shirt he’s wearing is a washed-out navy, probably softer than a baby’s bedsheets, and the cold air is probably nipping his bare forearms. Those old jeans love his body and the button winks at me like a Roman coin. The laces on his sneakers are loose and nearly undone. He is an absolute pleasure to look at.

  “Date didn’t go so well,” he surmises.

  To his credit he doesn’t smirk. Those dark blue eyes watch me patiently. He lets me stand there and try to think of something. How can I get myself out of this situation? Embarrassment is starting to catch up with me again, now that the joking between us is fading away.

  “It went okay.” I check my watch.

  “But not great, if you’re outside my building. Or are you here to report good news?”

  “Oh, shut up. I wanted to . . . I don’t know. See where you live. How could I resist? I was thinking about putting a dead fish in your mailbox one day. You saw where I live. It’s unfair and uneven.”

  He won’t be distracted. “Did you kiss him like we agreed?”

  I look at the streetlight. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  While I dither he puts his hands on his hips and looks down the street, apparently at his wit’s end. I wipe the back of my hand across my lips.

  “The date itself went f
ine,” I begin, but he steps close and cradles my jaw in his hands. The tension is crackling like static.

  “Fine. Fine and great and nice. You need something more than fine. Tell me the truth.”

  “Fine is exactly what I need. I need something normal, and easy.” I see disappointment in his eyes.

  “That’s not what you need. Trust me.”

  I try to turn my face away, but he won’t allow it. I feel his thumb trace across my cheek. I try to push him away but end up tugging him closer, his T-shirt in my fists.

  “He’s not enough for you.”

  “I have no idea why I’m even here.”

  “You do know.” He presses a kiss to my cheekbone, and I rise to my tiptoes, shivering. “You’re here to tell me the truth. Once you stop being a little liar.”

  He’s right, of course. He’s always right.

  “No one can kiss me like you do.”

  I have the rare privilege of seeing Josh’s eyes flash bright from something other than irritation or anger. He steps closer and pauses to assess me. Whatever he sees in my own eyes seems to reassure him, and he wraps his arms around me and lifts me clear off my feet. His mouth touches mine.

  We both let out twin sighs of relief. There’s no point in lying about why I’m here on the wet pavement outside his building.

  It starts as nothing more than breathing each other’s air, until the pressure of our lips breaks into an open-mouth slide. I said earlier, What does it matter? Unfortunately for me, this kiss matters.

  The muscles in my arms begin to quiver pathetically at his neck and he holds me tighter until I can feel he’s got me. My fingers curl into his hair, and I tug the silky thickness. He groans. Our lips sink luxuriously into kisses. Slip, tug, slide.

  The energy that usually lashes ineffectively inside each of us now has a conduit, forming a loop of electricity between us, cycling through me, into him. My heart is glowing in my chest like a bulb, flashing brighter with each movement of his lips.

  I manage to take a breath and our slow, sexy slide is cut into a series of broken-up kisses, like gentle bites. He’s testing, and there’s a shyness there too. I feel like I’m being told a secret.

  There’s a fragility in this kiss I would never have expected. It’s the same as the knowledge that one day this memory will fade. He’s trying to make me remember this. It’s so bittersweet my heart begins to hurt. Just as my mouth opens and I try to slide my tongue, he ends the kiss on a chaste note.

  Was that a last kiss?

  “My signature first-date kiss.” He waits for a response but he must see from my face I’m not capable of human language right now.

  He continues to hold me in a comfortable hug. I cross my ankles and look at his face like I’ve never seen this person before. The impact of his beauty is almost frightening up this close, with those eyes flashing bright. Our noses brush together. The sparks are in my mouth, desperate to reconnect with his.

  I picture him on a date with someone else, and a punch of jealousy gets me right in the gut.

  “Yeah, yeah. You win,” I say once I regain my breath. “More.”

  I lean forward but he doesn’t take the hint. As gorgeous as it was, it was only a fraction of what he’s capable of. I need the intensity of the elevator.

  A middle-aged couple walking arm in arm pass us by, breaking our little bubble. The woman looks back over her shoulder, her heart in her eyes. We clearly look flippin’ adorable.

  “My car is that way.” I start to squirm and point.

  “My apartment is that way,” he points upward and carefully puts me on the ground like a milk bottle.

  “I can’t.”

  “Tiny. Little. Chicken.” He’s got my number, all right. My turn to try out some scary honesty.

  “Fine. I admit it. I’m scared shitless. If I come upstairs, we both know what will happen.”

  “Pray tell.”

  “Or Something will happen. That one time I was talking about. We won’t make it to the interviews next week. We’ll both be crippled in your bed, with the sheets in rags.”

  His mouth lifts in what I think is going to be one hell of a heart-exploding smile so I turn and point myself in the direction of my car. I lift one foot and begin to run.

  Chapter 14

  No you don’t,” he tells me. He walks into the building lobby with me under his arm like a rolled-up newspaper. He even checks his mailbox.

  “Relax. I’m just going to let you see my apartment, so that we’re even.”

  “I always thought you’d live underground somewhere, near the earth’s core,” I manage to say as he hits the button for the fourth floor. Watching his finger gives me flashbacks. I look at the red emergency button and the handrail.

  I try to discreetly smell him. I bypass discreet and press my nose against his T-shirt and suck in two brimming lungfuls. Shameful addict. If he notices he doesn’t comment.

  “Uncle Satan didn’t have any apartments available in my price range.”

  It’s a big elevator and there’s no reason for me to remain under his arm like this. But four floors is such a short distance, there’s hardly any point in removing my arms from his waist. He’s got his fingertips in my hair.

  I spread my hands slowly, one across his back, the other across his abdomen. Muscle and heat and flesh. I’m pressing my nose back against his ribs, inhaling again.

  “Creep,” he says mildly, and we are walking down the hall. He unlocks a door and I am teetering in the doorway of Joshua Templeman’s apartment. He strips off my coat like a banana peel. I brace myself.

  He hangs my coat near the door. “Come in, then.”

  I am not sure what to expect. Some kind of gray cement cell maybe, devoid of personality, a huge flat-screen TV, and a wooden stool. A voodoo doll with black hair and red lipstick. A Strawberry Shortcake doll with a knife through her heart.

  “Where’s the dart board with my picture on it?” I lean in a little farther.

  “It’s in the spare room.”

  It’s masculine and dark, lusciously warm, all the walls painted in chocolates and sand. There’s a zingy scent of orange. A big squashy couch sits center stage in front of every male’s prerequisite giant flat screen, which he hadn’t even turned off. He was in a big hurry. I step out of my shoes, immediately shrinking a little more. He disappears into the kitchen and I peer around the corner.

  “Have a snoop. I know you’re dying to.” He begins to fill a shiny silver kettle, setting it on the stovetop. I let out a shaky breath. I’m not about to be ravished. No one boils water beforehand, except maybe in the Middle Ages.

  He’s right of course. I’m dying to look. It’s why I came here. The Joshua I know is no longer enough. Knowledge is power, and I can’t get enough at this point. A silent, exhilarated squeal is lodged in my throat. This is so much better than only seeing the sidewalk outside his building.

  There’s a bookcase lining an entire wall. By the window there’s an armchair and another lamp, with a stack of books illuminated beneath it. Even more books on the coffee table. I’m intensely relieved by this. What would I have done if he turned out to be a beautiful illiterate?

  I like his lampshades. I step into one of the big bottle-green circles of light they cast on the oriental rug. I look down and study the pattern; vines of ivy curving and twisting. On the wall in his living room is a framed painting of a hillside, likely Italian, maybe Tuscany. It’s an original, not a print; I can see the tiny dabs made by a paintbrush, and the gold frame is ornate. There are buildings clustered on the hill; church domes and spires, and a darkening purple-black sky overhead. A freckling of the faintest silver stars.

  There are some business magazines on the coffee table. There is a fancy, pretty cushion on the couch made of rows and rows of blue ribbons. It’s all so . . . unexpected. Not in the least bit minimal. It’s like a real human lives here. I realize with a jolt that his place is far lovelier than mine. I look under his couch. Nothing. Not even dust.

/>   I spot a little origami bird made of notepaper I once flicked at him during a meeting. It is balanced on the edge of the bookshelf. I look at his profile in the kitchen as he arranges two mugs on the counter in front of him. How strange to imagine him putting my tiny folded scrap in his pocket and bringing it home.

  On the next shelf down is a single framed photograph of Josh and Patrick posed in between a couple who I assume are his parents. His father is big and handsome, with a grim edge to his smile, but his mother almost glows out of the picture. She’s clearly bursting at the seams to have two such big handsome sons.

  “I like your mother,” I tell him as he approaches. He looks at the photograph, and his lips press together. I take the hint and move on.

  He’s got a lot of medical textbooks on the bottom shelf, which look pretty dated. There’s also an articulated anatomy statue of a hand, showing all of the bones. I fold the fingers down until only the middle one remains raised, and smirk at my cleverness.

  “Why do you have these?”

  “They’re from my other life.” He disappears into the kitchen again.

  I hit Mute on the TV remote and the silence drenches us. I creep past him into his kitchen. It’s sparkling clean and the dishwasher is humming. The orange scent is his antibacterial counter spray. I notice my Post-it note with the kiss on it stuck to the fridge and point at it.

  He shrugs. “You put so much hard work into it. Seemed a shame to waste it.”

  I stand there in the lightbulb glow of his refrigerator and stare at everything. There’s a rainbow of color in here. Stalks. Leaves. Whiskery roots. Tofu and organic pasta sauce.

  “My fridge is nothing but cheese and condiments.”

  “I know.” I close the fridge and lean against it, magnets digging into my spine. I put my face up for a kiss but he shakes his head.

  A little crestfallen, I look in his cutlery drawer and stroke the arm of the jacket hanging by the door. In the pocket I find a gas station receipt. Forty-six dollars paid in cash.

  Everything is neat, everything in its place. No wonder my apartment broke him out in stress hives.