Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1)

by Charlotte Stein

  Or would it be something subtler, something more insidious? Something like the flyer he had posted around school telling everyone to watch out for the whale that had gotten loose from SeaWorld, maybe—though when she riffled through the papers on his desk she found nothing. Just stuff that belonged to the new him, the him that she had come to love. There was a bunch of her notes to him, carefully saved. A book she’d mentioned—The Amber Spyglass—that he’d underlined passages in.

  She read them sitting in his desk chair, teeth digging deep into her lip. Half convinced by the end that it was all just her imagination jumping at shadows again. How could it be otherwise, when he’d actually written this next to the words the birthday of my life has come, my love has come to me? There wasn’t a reason to do that. It didn’t help with any master plan. He had no reason to think she would find this book and pick it up and be impressed by what he’d written there.

  He had no reason to have done a lot of the things he had for her.

  But the emails were in his sent box all the same.

  Truthfully, she didn’t intend to look. She knew she was already hovering on the wrong side of insane. Him lying to Professor Harrison meant almost nothing, and the picture Chad had taken meant even less—so really what was the point? She didn’t know. She just clicked on his mail app anyway, like a sleepwalker who negotiated the living room furniture out of habit more than awareness.

  And then she was scrolling through his emails.

  She was doing worse than scrolling through—she searched for her name.

  Though somehow she didn’t really expect to find it. His in-box was largely flotsam and jetsam, party invitations jostling alongside subscriptions to typical him-type stuff like stress balls that farted when you squeezed them. There was nothing personal, nothing serious…until she hit Return and there they were. Email after email with Letty as the subject line, sent to some joker’s address: FuckingDouchebag@yahoo.com, she read, and just knew.

  It was probably Jason’s email address. Or was it Patrick’s, or Chad’s?

  It was hard to tell judging by the content, because there wasn’t much of it. A few of them were just pictures of her—the one he’d taken when they’d eaten outside and a leaf had blown into her hair at a funny angle, and another of the weird hole she had discovered in her jeans, by the knee. A couple contained no more than a few sentences that she seemed to recall saying to him. No names, no sign off, no commentary—just the straightforward facts, like he was compiling some sort of dossier to give to the court.

  Here are the things she did wrong, Your Honor.

  Only it wasn’t her that had done wrong. It wasn’t her.

  She hadn’t sent anyone a video of them having sex.

  God, God, he had sent a video to someone of them having sex. She watched the crooked, half-obscured vision of her as she kissed him and touched him and closed her eyes in ecstasy and happiness and love for him. Oh, you could clearly see how much she loved him—more than she’d ever said, more than she’d ever wanted to reveal. She thought she’d guarded her heart a little better than that, but no no no. It was raw and open and right there for anyone to see. He probably noticed it a thousand years ago, when she was busy still thinking she hated him.

  And now she could never go back to that.

  She couldn’t go back to that perfect state where nothing might penetrate her armor. He had gotten through, and now the whole thing was full of holes. All he needed to do to wound her was half of this, one tenth of this, and yet she suspected he wasn’t even done. This stuff was clearly leading to some big thing. Broadcasting it to the whole of campus maybe, or creating some kind of YouTube nightmare. She could imagine Jason having a vlog, full of mean pranks and cruel jokes.

  And that was before she flicked through the pages to the first email, in search of the beginning of this elaborate scheme. Some word, some sign of what they were plotting together, some hint of revenge or festering resentments. Though she didn’t really brace herself for how bad it could be. She imagined a sniggering email to Jason, and instead found an email to her.

  One that he had sent the day after the accident, only to have it bounce. Probably because of her father, she thought, and thanked god for that. If she had read it at the time it would have destroyed her.

  Though the destruction was much more complete now.

  She read the lines with blurry eyes, sick with despair and disbelief:

  Letty,

  If you think I care that you’re hurt, I don’t. I’m not sorry about the shit that went down—it was your fault. Everything was all your fault anyway and you deserve all of this.

  Fuck you, Letty, for doing this to me. Fuck. You.

  Tate

  Then sobbed, for all the things she had lost.

  Chapter 22

  She couldn’t remember the twenty minutes it took for him to get to his room. Something must have happened in the interim, but she couldn’t say what. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was still sitting in his desk chair when the door opened, that email still open on the laptop in front of her. Face wet and insides sort of hollowed out, as though that fuck and that you had reached in and scooped it all up.

  And the only way to get any of it back was to rewind herself.

  All the way back, to the girl she had been on that bluff.

  “Man, I knew you could stoop low. But this a steep drop, even for you.”

  “What? What are you—”

  She knew what cut him off before he could finish the question. He’d seen what she was looking at. That fucking email, the pictures she’d left up, the video still playing on an infinite loop in the corner. It made her bleed to see her own tender-hearted face over and over, but it was worth it somehow. This was the scene in their movie where the villain was confronted with the evidence of his wrongdoing.

  Only the villain in this case was him and, oh god, she could hardly stand it.

  Just hearing the bafflement in his voice. The vulnerability.

  The fake, fake, fake fucking vulnerability.

  “You went through my emails? Why would you…How could you…?”

  “I don’t think demanding answers from me is really the way you want to go.”

  “I don’t know which other way I should go. I don’t know what you think this is.”

  She stood up then. She had to. There was too much roiling emotion in her to stay seated.

  And besides, she needed room to move. To throw her hands up and shake her fucking fists.

  “Oh my god, are you serious? Are you seriously going to try spinning this garbage out? Look at this shit! Man, the jig is fucking up, asshole. I know, okay. I know that you’ve been fucking secretly filming me and sending emails to some dick—probably the same one that split my fucking head open.”

  “No wait, just wait a second, let me think.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like it would be a super smart move for me to make. Wait so that you can dream up a way to weasel out of this. Or maybe you just want time to figure out how to dump the pig blood on my head anyway, huh? Bring your master plan forward a little, perhaps?”

  Now it was his turn to throw his hands up. To lose it a little.

  “This isn’t Carrie, Letty, goddamn it, I just—” he started.

  But she couldn’t let him finish. Not when he was this good at making it convincing. Not when he could make his eyes seem so full of panic, and force that desperate tone into his voice.

  “You just what? Your thumb slipped on the record button? You fell headfirst into emailing Mr. Douchebag? I can imagine all of that pretty easily. But you know what I can’t imagine? How you can possibly have meant your apologies, when right here in black and white you say that I deserved it.”

  She managed to get through most of it before she broke. But then she got to the word deserved and her voice just started to fall apart. Every bit of her fell apart. She had to take a second to gather herself, to hold back the tears—though her efforts were nowhere near as good as
they once were. Some still leaked out. Her chin still trembled. And when she finally spoke again, her pain was riddled through her voice.

  She could hear it, and knew he could, too.

  “And you know what, Tate? You were right. I did. I totally did deserve it. I deserve all of this, too, because honestly, anyone this fucking stupid should never get some fabulous and amazing happy ending. I fucking knew exactly what you were and still let you fool me. I honestly thought you cared for me, even after everything that happened.”

  “You weren’t wrong to think I care for you, Letty, you—”

  “Oh just fucking stop it, Tate, stop. There is nothing you can say that will make me believe you. You can’t trick some bumbling professor into setting me up a second time. I won’t take off my clothes again or tell you I love you—it’s done; it’s completely done. You’ve wrung every bit of joy and life and love right out of me, and now there’s not even enough to make it funny for you anymore.”

  “You don’t mean that. Come on, tell me you don’t mean that part about it all being wrung out,” he said, voice and tone and expression so full of a kind of pleading desperation that for a second she almost wavered. She had to glance away to get a grip on herself. She had to remember how good he was at knowing exactly how to get her, before she could go on.

  “I’m sorry if it ruins your plans to torment me until the end of time. I really am. But it will always and forever be the case from now on. I never want to look at your disgusting face, or hear your pathetic voice, or acknowledge a stupid word you say, ever again.”

  “That was…that was really harsh.”

  “You think that was harsh? Oh, it’s got nothing on the stuff I came up with over years and years of sheer loathing. The hours I spent lovingly crafting insults just for you, my love. And now I have nothing left to lose, and a hundred times the ammunition.”

  She stopped there, partly to calm her rising voice.

  Mostly so she could push past him, while the blood was still hot in her veins. She didn’t think he would stop her, but who knew really? Who knew what this man was capable of—this man who stood there silently as she opened the door, still playing the part of a broken man?

  She even saw him close his eyes as she spat her goodbye, so real it actually left her satisfied.

  Like she’d really hurt him with that one last parting shot.

  “Go on and give me an excuse to use it, motherfucker.”

  Chapter 23

  It took a month for him to accept the game was over. A month of deleted emails and texts, of him knocking on her door in the middle of the night. One time she woke from a fitful sleep to hear Lydia screaming at him in the hallway; in the morning she showed Letty the mark on the wall where she’d thrown a shoe. I would have thrown a hammer if I was confident I would hit his massive head, she’d said, as they lay in her bed all snuggled down together.

  And to her surprise, she found it helped.

  Having a real friend after the fact helped. There was someone there to hold her hand when things got rough, someone there to form a buffer between herself and everything that was awful and nightmarish. When they passed him in the hall, Lydia acted as a shield. She gave Letty the strength to look right through him, no matter how much she might want to search his face for some sign of the other him.

  The fake him. The him he had made up, just to fuck with her.

  It was brutal. But it got better. Or at the very least, it got easier. So easy, in fact, that when she saw Chad skulking toward the picnic table she had chosen—to avoid the cafeteria, where Tate nearly always was—she barely flinched. She didn’t look down. She stared at him the whole way, stony faced, so that by the time he got to them he knew he was unwelcome.

  And if he didn’t, her tone made it clear.

  “If he honestly thinks he’s going to get to me through you, I should probably let you both know: that’s the fucking stupidest plan I’ve ever heard of.”

  “That…no. No, I just saw you and thought…”

  “Thought what, Chad? That I might flash a boob and let you get another picture?”

  To his credit he turned crimson and looked away.

  And then less to his credit, he kept trying.

  Christ, why did they keep trying?

  “So I guess that is why you don’t talk to him anymore. Because of me.”

  “Is that really what you’re claiming he told you? That this is all your fault?”

  She put just the right amount of sarcasm in her voice.

  But it didn’t have any effect. He was on a roll now, apparently.

  “He doesn’t tell me anything anymore. We haven’t talked since the black eye, and even then it was pretty much just you fucking fuck you fuck you if you ever do that again I will turn you into a fuck fuck fuck.”

  “What exactly is a fuck fuck fuck?”

  “I dunno, but I didn’t want it to happen to me, so…”

  “So you thought you’d come over here and pretend that you guys weren’t in on all of it together? You know I have to say, that was a pretty convincing attempt. It almost makes me want to hear what comes next.”

  “Nothing comes next. I don’t even know what you’re talking about—there was no in on anything together with Tate. I did a dumb thing and he threatened to fuck fuck fuck me, that was it. And if you’ve ever seen what he’s got in his underpants, you should totally understand why I am terrified of that. Like, I wouldn’t even be here talking to you if I thought he cared anymore, just in case this casual chat gets me a minifuck.”

  “Wow. You are really good. I’m impressed.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I’m barely following this conversation.”

  She stopped then—though not because she was falling for this, because she totally wasn’t. There was just something about the word barely and the word conversation that made her want to push him, hard. Get real answers out of this fake-puzzled jackass.

  “Are you honestly going to claim that you had no idea Tate was just screwing with me? That you’re not talking to me so he can screw with me some more? That’s really the play you’re going to make right now?”

  “You guys broke up because he was screwing with you? Like, as in a joke?”

  Man, she didn’t like his tone at all. He sounded almost as horrified as she felt.

  And still with that confusion, too.

  She couldn’t stand his confusion.

  “Of course as in a joke. You know I mean as in a joke.”

  “I don’t see how I could when he goes around looking like he wants to die.”

  “Okay, you know what? It was really nice listening to this little fairy tale you’re spinning, and my estimation of your IQ has definitely gone up a few points. But I’ve got to get to class now.”

  She stood up to leave—too fast, she knew. It didn’t feel like the right reaction.

  There was something panicked about it, rather than outraged.

  “Letty, just hold on a second. Just wait, okay? I don’t think you’ve got it right. If you did, if it was just some kind of prank, why would he be like this? He doesn’t talk to anyone, he’s dropped too much weight—Coach says that if he doesn’t straighten out he—”

  “I don’t care what your coach says. I don’t care what any of you say.”

  “Letty, some guys stopped by the gym.”

  He said it right as she was at the door back to the building, which really should have kept her walking. He was so clearly just trying to keep her talking, and probably not for good reasons. Maybe Tate was just waiting over the hill behind them, in a truck with a grille like the teeth of some vicious animal. She carried on doing this, and pretty soon he would mow her down.

  And yet.

  Yet.

  She was listening.

  “They looked like pretty bad news. I heard one of them say that if he didn’t throw the next one, they were going to take action—and I don’t think they meant a pat on the back. I think they meant serious fucking business, but Tate d
idn’t even seem to give a shit. I tried to ask him after they were gone if he was going to do what they want, and he just shrugged. Like it didn’t matter. Like nothing matters. If he didn’t care about you why would he be like that? Why would he do that?”

  “You say that like there’s no way you could be full of shit, too.”

  “I can tell you know I’m not. I know that you—”

  “You don’t know anything about me, Chad. You don’t know what it was like to waste away half your life wondering when the next blow was going to come and how hard it was going to put you down. You’re good-looking and popular and built, so you’ll never understand what it’s like to have someone take videos of you and pictures and send them to people with email addresses like FuckingDouchebag@yahoo.com. That just isn’t your reality. So at least have the decency to not pretend you have insight into me and who I am.”

  “You’re right. I don’t,” he said, and she knew, she just knew something else was coming. A screenwriter couldn’t have scripted a more pregnant pause if she tried. He even let his voice dip at the end of the don’t, as if he knew just how to get her.

  Turned out, he did.

  “But I do know that email address belongs to him.”

  It hit her like that truck once had, though she tried to pretend otherwise. To herself, mostly, but to him, too. She didn’t allow herself to turn completely—she only looked over her shoulder. And when she spoke, she jammed every bit of derision she could into her stupidly wavering voice.

  “Oh, come the fuck on.”

  “I’m serious. Check it out if you don’t believe me. I bet you know his password, right? He uses the same probably shitty one for everything—I fucking know he does. I once saw him write his goddamn PIN on the back of his hand, so I’m willing to bet that address pops open for whatever garbage he’s using now. Just try it, Letty. You’ll see,” he said.

  But she was already disappearing through the door.

  “Goodbye, Chad.”

  Chapter 24

  She came very close to not asking. It seemed ridiculous to, for all kinds of reasons. And besides, Lydia was busy right at the moment she most wanted to do it. She was gathering up her shit, ready to leave for her baby-sitting job. Her jacket was almost on. She was checking her hair in the bathroom. It would have been so easy to just let it go, no matter how much it was nagging her.