The Hating Game

by Sally Thorne

  “The Or Something Game really intrigued me. Can you show me how it works?”

  He tosses the blankets over us, blocking out the entire world. He’s laughing, my favorite sound in the world.

  Then there’s nothing but silence. His mouth touches my skin.

  Let the real games begin.

  An Excerpt from The Comfort Zone

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  THE COMFORT ZONE

  Coming Summer 2017

  I got as far as the international baggage carousel before I began sinking back into the Carson-family-drama quicksand. My first mistake was turning off my phone from airplane mode. Actually, no, that’s not right. My first mistake was boarding in Heathrow.

  I thought it would have taken some serious arm-twisting to get me onto a plane back home, but in the end all it took was my boss Margo’s words. Emma, the New York office is desperate. You’re still only on a temporary transfer to us in London, so I really do have to say yes to them. It’s only for a month. Eversham Goldstein really needs you.

  I was needed? A warm fluttering filled my rib cage and I said yes. I’m a literary agent, so words are my life—and kind, appreciative words are apparently my Achilles’ heel. I wish I’d asked for a day to think it over. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be waiting here for my battered suitcase. It’s not that I hate this city. I just don’t feel ready to see some of its occupants.

  My email inbox doesn’t have any big emergencies with my authors or their editors. I do have an email from Louise, my father’s assistant. The subject line reads: Urgent—Read Immediately. I have a bad feeling that this might mess with my One-Month Survival Plan: Arrive, work, participate in the required family interactions no matter how awkward, leave. Possibly for good this time.

  I look up at a departure screen nearby and automatically scan for the word London. It’s arguably an unhelpful way to deal with this, so I make myself read whatever bomb Louise is about to drop on me. The first paragraph of her email is a heavy tapestry of caveats, precautions, and instructions to not panic. All the stuff that guarantees that I will panic. There’s a honk and the baggage carousel begins to move, but I can’t look up from my phone. Not until I know what’s happened. According to Louise, Dad’s received another extortion attempt. And just like that, I’m back in Crazy Town. Breathe that crazy air nice and deep.

  Someone hits my ankle with a luggage cart. It’s white-hot agony and I yip like a pup. Whoever did it doesn’t follow it up with a thousand British apologies, or even a single American one. I glower passive-aggressively at the floor, achieving nothing. It’s a painful message from New York itself: Yo, Emma! Welcome back! Want a reminder of why you left?

  I have a second email from Louise, a couple of hours after the first. It’s marked “high priority” and the subject line is filled entirely with exclamation points. My stomach drops away into the abyss. Is Dad bound and gagged in a basement somewhere? Will I be drawn into a game of cat and mouse with his kidnapper in a trail leading across the city, the stakes getting progressively higher? Will my eyes glint intently behind my glasses as I deliberate between green and red wires? Will I save the day, and win my father’s love?

  Probably not. A recent book-to-movie deal I brokered for one of my authors has made everything feel like a possible cinematic plot. The second scary-looking email from Louise is about a meeting and I’m weirdly crestfallen. I will never get to see The Rock cast as me. My presence is required at a compulsory security briefing regarding the extortion attempt at three P.M. Today. No ifs or buts. Recent international travel is not an excuse.

  My watch is still on London time and it hurts my heart to adjust it, but when I do, I have a new problem. I am going to be late. I find my bag, weave through the scores of travelers being picked up by excited loved ones, and head for the train.

  If you’re imagining my father is a senator or celebrity, you’re way off. He’s not a sports legend or old money. He’s the CEO of a property development firm and, finally, at this point in his career, he’s wealthy enough to extort from. It’s impossible to raze old buildings, build new ones, and have oodles of subcontractors on the payroll without making at least one mortal enemy a day. If I were him, I’d look at it as a major rich-guy milestone. The first time someone tried to squeeze money out of him, I bet his buddies at the country club brought out a dollar-sign-shaped cake for Dad. These days, it’s hardly worth mentioning.

  Before the money, a million years ago, it was just Dad and me. We lived in a little white house across the river, nursing broken hearts over Mom and getting along as best we could. Our idea of extravagance was frozen pizzas on Friday night. I rode my bike around the block at dusk, always ringing my bike bell when I passed our green front door as my way of saying hello to Mom as she watched me from her comfy cloud above. I wonder if Dad can even remember that house. It’s a long way from where he lives today.

  I haven’t seen my dad in so long, I wonder if he remembers me.

  WHEN I BUMP open the heavy door to Centurion Security with my butt and drag my suitcase in, I’m sweating and tired. When I turn around, I realize something pretty typical. I’ve just flown eight hours across the ocean, changed time zones, and taken a train and taxi. And I’m still early.

  There’s no one else here except for the receptionist, who is touch-typing furiously and chooses to ignore me. She is name-tagged Sheree. She looks like a Sheree. I can see my own reflection in her eyeball but she won’t look up because she’s busy and important. I’m now accustomed to being patient and polite and bottling up my resentments behind a cheerio smile, so I wait until she finally looks up at me.

  “All right?” The utterly British greeting pops out of my mouth and I hear how ridiculous it sounds in my accent. “Um, hi. I’m Emma Carson. I have a meeting here.”

  “Take a seat, I’ll let Greg know you’re here.” In her mind, Sheree adds, when I’m good and ready. Her typing resumes.

  There’s a one-in-a-million chance that Claudia has arrived early and is in one of those closed meeting rooms.

  “Has my sister arrived yet? Claudia Carson?”

  Claudia’s name rings a bell with this woman. Her eyes spark and her mouth becomes a smile. She stops typing and rests her elbows on her desk. “No, she’s not here. She’s your sister? How lucky.”

  “Oh, do you know her?”

  “I feel like I do. Model Behavior was so addictive. My friends came over every week to watch it and we drank wine and gave ourselves manicures. We were Team Claudia, right from the start. We even had the pink T-shirts.”

  I don’t have to work hard to imagine Sheree and her squad. Model Behavior was a reality TV show. Beautiful boys and girls locked in a compound filled with cameras, fruit platters, and sun loungers. Girls in bikinis fought endlessly over one smug prat named Jordan. It. Was. Dreck. Have I been ruined by BBC period dramas, Shakespeare, and West End shows? Yes.

  “Yes, it was really good.” I have no conviction in my voice and I definitely don’t fool Sheree. She looks at me with narrowed eyes. She smells snob.

  “Claudia won the entire competition. She’s incredible. If I were you, I’d be so proud.” With a sniff, she begins typing again, and I can see that her hands are shaking a little with new nerves. Her eyes begin flicking toward the door, over and over. She finally gives up on work and begins to check her appearance.

  I drag my bag to a chair that is half-obscured by a huge potted plant and set up camp. My neck pillow is hanging from the strap of my bag, my clothes are creased, and my hair is unraveling. I’m dead to Sheree now, so she won’t care if I unbraid my hair and brush it. It’s a huge, thick, wavy nightmare. There are probably hikers lost in there. But I can’t cut it short, because without the weight it grows outward into a ball formation. I’ve seen pictures of my mom. She gifted me with this particular genetic burden: huge hair.

  I create three ropes and begin rebraiding. Pip was one of my London flatmates and she onc
e told me my hair looked like a braided peach strudel. She was very drunk at the time and meant it as a compliment. She picked it up in both hands, pretending to bite into it. “Delishusss,” she said over and over until we flagged down an adorable black cab home.

  I study it critically now as it lays vertically down my chest and do have to admit that it just needs some sugar granules and some glimpses of hot fruit. My stomach growls loudly. Sheree coughs and I jerk in my seat. She’s not looking at me. She has no idea there’s someone in this room thinking about taking out a knife and cutting off a snack portion of her own braid. That’s the great thing about brains. It’s all a secret.

  I recheck that Claudia’s present hasn’t gotten squashed, even though I know it was fine the last time I looked. I should have gone with hot-pink gift wrap. That’s her signature color, like Barbie. Glittery gold wrap; what was I thinking? A whirring sensation begins in the pit of my stomach and I have to tell myself forcefully, don’t be nervous. She’s not a kid anymore. You can’t ruin everything with the wrong gift-wrap choice. Probably not.

  Please don’t be nervous. Please don’t be nervous. I say it to myself until my body begins to obey.

  For me to describe Claudia, I first have to admit that I once made a wish—and it came true. Crazy, right? I know on an intellectual level that it wasn’t me who created this outcome. I don’t have special powers. I wasn’t an omniscient narrator, intoning what was soon to come while my widower father sat in the dark playing his dead wife’s favorite records. I was just a kid and I didn’t know what I was asking for.

  But I wished so hard. That’s what always gets me. I was standing on a kitchen chair when I asked my mom for something special. My request streamed out of my chest like a sunbeam, from me to her, lighting up heaven, and that night I rode my bike under a sunset that was every shade of pink. One nod from Mom and the plan was in motion. That’s why my heart still believes I made it happen.

  And like all big wishes, I paid a price.

  To avoid following that particular train of thought, I start to think about my golden steaming braid again, just as the glass door to Centurion Security pushes open and a young woman steps in. Unlike my inelegant backward-pachyderm entrance, she looks like she’s slipping through red-velvet curtains onto a stage. A spotlight wobbles and then encircles her in full focus. She carries glossy cardboard shopping bags, strung around each wrist like bunches of rectangle helium balloons that strain heavily below her waist.

  The bags have expensive logos: Chanel, Prada, Fendi, Tiffany & Co. The audience knows this is a girl of generous means. She’s wearing a dress that sparkles. Her hair is long and Old-Hollywood white-blonde. She lifts her face to the light and her audience thinks, holy shit. Ineloquent, but we’re all in the same boat there.

  Here she is, Claudia Carson, my own personal wish come true, and this is how she enters every single room.

  About the Author

  SALLY THORNE lives in Canberra, Australia, and spends her days writing funding submissions and drafting contracts (yawn!), so it’s not surprising that after hours she climbs into colorful fictional worlds of her own creation. She lives with her husband in a house filled with vintage toys, too many cushions, a haunted dollhouse, and the world’s sweetest pug. The Hating Game is her first novel.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Praise for The Hating Game

  “Deliciously fun and super sexy, Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game stole my life for two days. I couldn’t put it down until Lucy and Josh’s all-consuming hateship changed into a tentative friendship and then a juicy, tender, adorable love.”

  —Valerie Frankel, bestselling author of Four of a Kind

  “A brilliant, biting, hilarious new voice. The Hating Game will take the rom-com world by storm. One of the best I’ve read, ever.”

  —Kristan Higgins, New York Times bestselling author

  “An addictive, dazzling debut. The Hating Game is bursting at the seams with love (and hate) and heart.”

  —Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author

  “Be prepared to play the Charming Game with Sally Thorne. The irrepressible Lucy and her starchy, growly counterpart Joshua will win you over from the opening page.”

  —Jane Litte, Dear Author

  “Thorne is a strong writer and one to watch. Her debut will have readers rooting for both Lucy and Joshua in whatever games they play.”

  —Library Journal

  “Funny, smart, fresh, and thoroughly enjoyable from the first delicious page to the last. I highly recommend.”

  —Susan Elizabeth Phillips, New York Times bestselling author

  Credits

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE HATING GAME. Copyright © 2016 by Sally Thorne. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-243959-8

  EPub Edition AUGUST 2016 ISBN 9780062439604

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