Hate at First Sight

by Penelope Bloom

  I made Gardener Girl come with us to the concert at Levitt Shell. She was wearing black and white striped leggings with ankle boots and a “Too Tired to Care” t-shirt. Her hair was pinned up above one ear with a girly looking clip that was at odds with the hard-ass look she seemed to be going for. It was like a subtle reminder that she was still innocent and out-of-place in this world. I doubted she even gave the pink clip a second thought, but it felt like it was so her that it was almost funny.

  “Glad you dressed up,” I said. The background track to my comment was the sound of ten thousand hungry fans who were restless for me to take the stage.

  We were backstage. She was sitting on one of the couches. It was an ugly lime green, and I considered telling her that dozens of rock stars had probably fucked groupies on that couch. Normally I would've enjoyed watching her spring up, disgusted and outraged, but I decided I would try a new angle with her. She wanted to play tough with me. Her little verbal tirade in her hotel room was testament to that.

  She tugged at the bottom of her t-shirt, which only managed to temporarily strain the material against her tits and let me see that her bra was just as pink as the clip in her hair. I wondered what color her panties were under those leggings. “Yeah, should I try as hard as you do?” she asked. “You have the laziest rockstar ensemble I’ve ever seen. You’re like the Steve Jobs of rockstars.”

  I threw my palms out wide like I was presenting my outfit for her to judge. I wore jeans, sneakers, and a black v-neck. It was pretty close to a uniform me. “I decided a long time ago that I’d never go the whole sequined shoulder pads and suits of armor rockstar path if I made it big,” I said. “I wanted to leave setting hair on fire and drinking animal blood onstage to greats like Michael and Ozzy.”

  She looked like she was surprised to hear something out of my mouth that wasn’t an insult. “Too bad. Sequins would suit you. And I hear animal blood is good for your skin.”

  She was so effortlessly sexy it hurt. There was a sultry kind of rasp to her voice when she said it. An upward waggle of her eyebrows and a look in her eyes like we were the only two people in the world who were in on the joke.

  “Be careful, Gardener Girl,” I said. “I’ve been cold turkey on the drugs like I promised, but these moments before the show… They’re like a drug to me. And if you keep flirting with me…” I stepped closer, standing over her where she sat on the couch. I dropped my crutches, which I had made a point of using even after she called me out, just because I knew it pissed her off. I planted a hand on the wall and leaned in close enough to smell that familiar, intoxicating scent of flowers on her.

  “If I keep flir—” she started, then interrupted herself with a strained swallow that was more like a gulp. Red crept into her pale cheeks, and I smiled like a predator with the scent of prey.

  “Keep flirting and I’ll find out if your panties are as pink as your bra,” I said. “I’ll spread you out, find out if you taste as good as you smell, and I’ll see if you can still talk back to me when you’re cumming.” I lowered my voice even more, inching my face closer until kissing her would be as easy as thought.

  She cleared her throat, eyes moving past me. I turned my head a fraction, spotting Brent. He stood in the hallway with his arms crossed, drumsticks held together in one hand. “You okay?” he asked Gardener Girl.

  I looked back to her, a challenge in my eyes.

  “I can handle myself,” she said.

  I smelled wintergreen on her breath, like she had recently brushed her teeth.

  Brent hesitated in the doorway. It was obvious that he wanted to be her knight in shining armor. Eventually, he seemed to remember what she had said when we were in her hotel room. She didn’t need to be saved, and he wasn’t Mr. Nice Guy like he was pretending to be. He turned and left, and the sweet sensation of victory spread in my stomach.

  “So what’s it going to be?” I asked, already putting Brent from my thoughts. It was impossible to think about anything but her when I was this close.

  “You’re never going to find out what color my panties are,” she said. She had to kind of wiggle and roll to get out from under me, but her point was made. She wasn’t going to make it easy.

  I watched her walk away, thankful I had a show to distract myself from the uncomfortable throb between my legs. I needed to fuck that girl. I had to. If she thought I was going to change just to do it though, she was wrong. I was going to have her my way. The plan hadn’t changed.

  She was still on my mind when I took the stage. It was one of the smaller concerts on our tour, but enjoyed the venue, so I didn’t care if we didn’t bring in as much money from tickets or merch. The shows were my outlet. All the frustration and anger that built up in me, all the resentment and temptation to look back on my past, and all the questions of what could have been… Without performing, they would have driven me mad. The thoughts would’ve grown louder and louder until I couldn’t shut them out. Hell, I barely survived from show to show, which was why the pills and alcohol had always seemed like such a good idea.

  I looked out over the crowd and it felt like I sucked a little strength from every hungry set of eyes, every smile and frantic expression. It was all fuel for me, and I drank it thirstily. I was fucking alive. I was electricity. Fire.

  When the music was booming through the speakers and the mic was in my hand, I knew I was in control. The memory of that lipstick smell and her cold, dry fingers was blasted away. The things I’d done were ghosts, just forms made of mist that couldn’t hold their shape once the soundwaves exploded through them. All I needed in those moments was the sound of the crowd singing along with me, mouthing the words I had dredged up from a place Gardener Girl probably thought was empty and caked in ice.

  Those were my moments, and they were what I lived for.

  I looked to Taylor and then to Brent, nodded, and turned back to the mic and started the fucking show.

  15

  Aribella

  Zach found me after the show. He was still sweating from the performance. Still exhilarated. The energy practically radiated off him, and it was the closest to happy I’d ever seen him. Happy looked good on him.

  “I let you off this morning without cleaning my wound,” he said. Even the normal detached tone of his voice was absent. He was in a good mood. “Come on. You can make up for it now.”

  “You’re not serious. It’s a glorified scratch. What am I supposed to even clean?”

  He shrugged. “Deal’s a deal. I got it in the contract that you have to put your hands on me every day. I gotta cash in on it eventually.”

  “Fine. Is here good, your majesty?”

  He looked around as the crew was moving the last of the equipment off stage and out through the back. “Hold on,” he said. He disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with a small first-aid kit and motioned for me to follow him.

  Everyone had cleared out from the concert already. There was still some trash in the grass, but I knew when concerts ran late, the clean-up crew wouldn’t come until morning most of the time. We were alone on stage together, and it was a surreal feeling. The stars were out and there was a pleasant chill in the air.

  Zach used his crutches to hobble over to a stool near the back of the stage and sat down. I ignored them, because I knew he was just using them at this point to irk me.

  “Be gentle when you clean this shit,” he said. “Hurts like hell.”

  I rolled my eyes before snatching the first-aid kit from him and briefly considered cleaning it as roughly as I could, just to teach him I wouldn’t be forced into whatever this degrading act was every day for six months. But there was an atmosphere to the moment, like something sacred. Zach was different here on the stage. Different when no one else was around. It was just us, and whatever his demons were had been driven back for now. Maybe that was why he wanted to do this on stage, to make sure the spell held a little longer.

  "You realize I have no clue what I'm doing, right? My wound cleani
ng skills start and stop at band-aids and water."

  He shrugged. “It’s not rocket science. You clean it off and then you put a bandage over it. Am I going to have to walk you through it step-by-step when I finally fuck you, or did Brent already teach you the basics?”

  “Why do you do that?” I asked, unphased by his crudeness. I took out a small strip of gauze and applied rubbing alcohol to it before dabbing at his forehead. He winced, but was looking at me curiously.

  “Do what?”

  “Whenever you’re in danger of being halfway decent, you say something nasty. Why are you so afraid of people liking you?”

  “Fuck off,” he growled. He actually reached for his crutches then, like he was going to storm off stage, but I kicked them away from his hands before he could reach them.

  His eyes widened. He stared up at me in disbelief, speechless for once.

  “You’re not running this time. You probably think I was the one who ran away from everything that happened in Belvedere. But I see it now. You were the one running. It was just me that had to pack the bags. What had you so scared? What are you so—”

  “Stop it,” he said. His voice was barely controlled. He was breathing hard. Face flushed. “Stop fucking analyzing me.” His eyes flicked up to me then. Piercing blue and full of explosive energy, dangerous energy. “You always wanted to figure me out. You thought you understood. You thought you knew me. Even that first time by the hedges. You never knew me, Gardener Girl. Your mistake was not fucking me.”

  I scoffed. “Trust me. Not sleeping with you was the one thing that wasn’t a mistake.”

  “No,” he said. “If you had fucked me back then, I would’ve thrown you away. You would’ve realized you weren’t special. I wasn’t special. There were no secret feelings. No exceptions. You would’ve just become another number on the list and life would’ve moved on. For both of us.”

  “You’re so sure?” I asked. “What about that night at my sister’s party? What about the kiss?” I swallowed hard. “Did you always kiss other girls like it was your first time, like there was nothing in the world that could be sweeter? Or was that just for me?”

  His eyes devoured me, took me in and sucked me deeper into that endless blue storm of clouds. “You want me to say you were special, Gardener Girl? Is that what would make you happy?”

  “I want you to admit you felt it too.” I clamped my mouth shut, angry that I had said as much as I had. I didn’t want to be weak like this. I had planned to wall myself off from him, but all these feelings were rushing out of me now, held in for so long that the slightest crack had let them all come exploding out like water from behind a breached dam. “You felt something that night we kissed. I know you did.”

  “So what if I did?” he asked. “It was a fluke. Chemicals. You’re not special, Gardener Girl. You’re—”

  “Prove it,” I said, shocking myself when I gripped his shirt and pressed my mouth to his. It didn’t feel like the defeat I would’ve imagined. It felt like victory, like I was finally taking charge, because my body understood what my brain hadn’t grasped. I didn’t need to prove I could resist him this time to overcome my past. I needed to prove that there really had been something special between us, something worth making all the sacrifices I made. It would prove I hadn’t been silly and reckless, and that all the horrible things that followed in the wake of me falling for Zach and being cast out of his life were just stepping stones leading to something better.

  He didn’t respond at first. He just leaned back, letting me hold his silky lower lip between my lips, and for a terrifying moment, I thought he was going to prove me wrong and toss me off of him. Instead, he took a sudden, hard fistful of my hair and kissed me back. He kissed me like I was water and he was dying of thirst. His tongue teased mine and he bit at my lip, like he had gone wild with hunger. I took everything he had to give and drank it in.

  It was like stepping in a time capsule and jumping back eight years ago, back to that night on my bed while Heartbeats played from my iPod Shuffle and bathed us in those few stolen minutes.

  This was real.

  This was us.

  This was the invisible chain that had linked us together over all these years and through all the turmoil and hatred and emotion.

  He jerked back from the kiss, almost violently. “Shit. Maybe you are actually my muse. I think I feel a song coming on.”

  “I feel something too,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s a song.”

  He looked down where my body was between his legs and his erection pressed into my stomach.

  I felt vulnerable and wild at the same time. I had been so sure that I wanted to resist him, and now nothing felt clear anymore. It would be so easy. So sinfully easy to do more. To take more tonight. I could worry about consequences later. Find out how to pick up the pieces another time.

  “I’ll give you one point for the kiss, Gardener Girl.” He pulled me closer, nestling his lips against my ear until those lips tens of thousands of girls had dreamed about were all mine. “For the record, you taste as good as you smell. Better, even.”

  A hot wave of chills sprang down my spine and to my fingertips. He tasted good, too, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Only one point?” I asked.

  “Last time I checked, you weren’t too worried about the score. Now you’re trying to haggle for bonus points?”

  I blushed. “I just wanted to make a point.”

  “What point was that, exactly? You already knew I wanted to fuck you. I haven’t made a secret of it.”

  “That you feel whatever that was too. I can’t put it into words. But I felt it, and I think you did too. And maybe you felt it back then, too.”

  He gave me a blank look, like he always seemed to do when I pressed him to say anything remotely emotional.

  “You know,” I said, a sudden anger flooding through me. “If you want to fuck me so badly, maybe you would actually stand a chance if you had the balls to admit you have feelings for me, and not the kind that start and stop between your legs.”

  He patted my cheek, extinguishing all the romantic energy that had been crackling between us in a single, patronizing gesture. “Look, I get it. You want me to make this easy on you. You’ve wanted the same thing I have since high school, but you’re too proud to admit it. Don’t you get it? We can’t both get what we want. You want me to make some grand gesture of apology so your conscience won’t self-destruct when you finally give in and fuck me. I want you to realize that's not the way this story goes. Boy meets girl. Boy was an ass, but girl still wanted to fuck boy. Boy and girl fuck, boy and girl go their separate ways. The only catch was the eight-year intermission."

  I pushed away from him and threw up my hands in helpless frustration. I ran my hand across the back of my mouth to wipe any traces of him off me. “You win. I do realize something. I’m an idiot. I’m a complete and total idiot for thinking you were ever capable of change, or that there might just maybe be somebody good trapped inside there. You’re hopeless, Zach. We’re hopeless. I knew that coming in, and I still let you pull the same shit, and that’s on me. You know what? Maybe you should go back to your room and get drunk tonight. Screw it. I don’t care if you use drugs anymore or drink. Maybe it’d be more fun with a roadie in your room?”

  “You done?” he asked.

  “Almost,” I said. I bent down, lifted up both his crutches, and threw them as hard as I could off the stage and into the grass. “Yeah. Now I’m done. See you back at the hotel. If I see you pretending to use these stupid things again, I’m going to light them on fire.”

  I had myself an embarrassing, confused cry on the ride home from the venue to the hotel. Thankfully, I was alone in a black SUV with one of the drivers. The guy awkwardly asked if I was okay once, and then made the wise decision to keep to himself for the rest of the ride.

  I cried because I kept telling myself my goal was to prove I could stand up to Zach, that I didn’t need him. Instead, I fanned the fl
ames. They blossomed and churned like something alive. Kissing him felt right. God it felt so right.

  I knew he felt it too. I was so sure of it. But with a few words and a simple gesture, he did what he always did. It felt so natural for feelings to develop between us. It was a complex dance, like a flitting energy that existed between the banter and the back-and-forth. Given enough time, it always formed into something magnetic that drew us together despite all apparent evidence that we should stay apart. It had been the same way back in Belvedere.

  And Zach was still the same, destructive asshole, because every time that energy started to feel overwhelming, Zach had a special talent for destroying it, like he had tonight. Why couldn’t he just let it go? See what would happen if we didn’t sabotage it for once? What was the goddamn harm in seeing what it would feel like for us to be more than enemies for once?

  I called Mandy once I had calmed down enough that she wouldn’t hear I had been crying. I was standing outside the hotel in a quiet corner where I wouldn’t be overheard.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I call you a zillion times at reasonable times of day,” she said, voice thick with sleep. “I call and I call and I call, and you ghost me. And you decide to finally call me at two am? I think some of Zach Thornwood’s shitty manners rubbed off on you, girl.”

  My voice broke. “I need your help.”

  “Ari? What’s going on? Are you okay?” She sounded wide awake now.

  “I’m—yeah. I’m okay. It’s Zach.” My words were running over each other and I wasn’t making sense, I knew that, but it hardly made sense in my head, either. “Why is it so hard to hate him?” I sniffled and pressed my hand to my forehead, unable to find any more words.