Mandy didn’t speak for a few moments. She was probably trying to piece together the puzzle from the few bits I had given her. “Well, he started out same-old-same-old, right? Blackmail. Royal dick. The whole deal.”
“Right,” I said.
“But he’s being nicer now? Is that the problem? You’re starting to like him because he’s actually being halfway decent?”
“No. He’s still insufferable. I think he might actually be a sociopath.”
Another long pause. “I don’t want to sound like captain obvious here, but I’m not sure what the problem is. Just, you know, hate the guy. He’s blackmailing you, after all. That should be enough on its own.”
I turn and lean my head against the brick of the hotel exterior, staring at my broken reflection in a puddle at my feet. "But what if he doesn't mean all the things he says and does? What if he's doing it to push me away? Like there's actually a good guy in there. How do I know it's not some twisted cry for help?"
“Ari,” she said softly. Her tone told me I was about to get a lecture. “You always tried to see the best in people. I think that’s why Zach got to you so much back then and why he still does. I mean, think about it. We were constantly getting ditched by friends and starting new schools with nasty rumors floating over our heads. I can see why you might develop a tendency to think people don’t mean what they say or that there’s some good person behind every bully. A guy like Zach probably put your brain on the fritz. How could someone that nasty really exist without there being another explanation? Right?”
“Yeah. You’re totally right,” I said. I was agreeing with her because I realized this wasn’t a problem I could call my sister and get the answer I wanted for. She was giving me the right answer. Cutting my heart off from him was the smart thing to do. It was the obvious thing to do. But I’d seen something in him. Mandy might not believe or understand that, and Zach definitely didn’t.
Maybe the regret I felt over the past really wasn’t for letting Zach walk over me.
It was because I never managed to reach past the cruel walls he puts up. I never got to see the real him. I paid a high price to give Zach a chance. The last years of high school. Tennis. College. My home. I let him take it all from me because I was so intent on following that nagging voice in my heart not to give up on him. And then I did. I gave up. I let every sacrifice I had made mean nothing with a single decision.
But I had already paid the price. I’d made a place in this new life he forced me into. Zach hadn’t earned my forgiveness. No matter how right we might be for each other, I wouldn’t give him my heart unless he proved he was ready for it. That was the lesson here. Maybe we would kiss again. More, even. But it wouldn't matter because I'd keep my heart locked away. It was my final bastion. The last precious thing I hadn't let him destroy, not entirely.
I almost expected Zach to come find me back at the hotel. Even after my blow-up. He’d come bursting into my room expecting to pick up where he had left off. Maybe he’d make some comment brushing off the things I said. After all, it was how he seemed to expect people to react when he did unspeakably cruel things to them. I’d just borrowed a page from his book.
Brent approached me when we were back at the hotel.
“So, what did you think?” he asked. His hair was still damp from the concert, but messy in a way that he admittedly made look good. He looked every bit the part of a rockstar, and it was hard not to feel my resolution to stay mad with him falter a little. It was ridiculous, but the comparatively minor faults in Brent’s personality were so much harder for me to ignore than Zach’s. “Of the concert,” he added when I didn’t respond right away.
“Oh, yeah. It was great.”
He grinned. “You didn’t watch it. Did you?”
I smiled a little, then shook my head. “I played on my phone in the bathroom until Zach was on stage, then I took a nap on the couch. It felt like the most spiteful thing I could do at the time. Now I realize I could’ve snuck a laxative into his drink or something. Missed opportunities,” I said with a theatrical sigh. “Maybe he could’ve written a song about that. Chocolate rain…”
Brent made a gagging sound and then burst out laughing. “Holy shit. I forgot how funny you are. How much I liked talking to you. I was stupid back then, Aribella. And now, even. I didn’t need to compete with Zach. If I had just been happy with—”
“Brent,” I said, stopping him. “You don’t need to apologize. That place was like poison. I think it messed with everybody’s head a little bit. Mine included.”
“It’s no excuse. You were right. What you said yesterday. Once Zach told me I couldn’t have you, it was just some kind of dick measuring contest. Which I would’ve won, by the way,” he added with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help smiling a little. “Well, your apology is appreciated. Thank you.”
Brent held eye contact, like he wanted to say something else.
“Well, I had better get back to my room. We’re leaving early in the morning tomorrow, right?” I asked.
“Y-yeah. Sure. You’re right,” Brent said, making no disguise of the fact that he was disappointed. I’d need to process that later. Right now my mind was spinning too much to make sense of it. “I’ll catch you on the bus tomorrow morning, then. Sleep tight.”
“You too,” I said, hoping I sounded cheerful.
I stepped out of the elevator on my floor and walked to my room, thoughts racing as I tried to put everything into place that had just happened.
I hadn’t been wrong when I told Brent that Belvedere poisoned people’s minds. The only untruthful part was that Belvedere hadn’t been the part that poisoned me. Zach had. He had infected my heart like a virus back then, and I was still trying to find a way to cure myself of his influence. It was why I pushed Brent away in the lobby. It was why I had never been in a successful relationship since. I never gave Zach the entirety of my heart, but I had set it aside on layaway for him, letting it grow dusty and cold while I waited and waited for the day when he’d come to claim what could be his.
An irrational, endlessly frustrating desire to fix Zach coursed through my veins. He was a mystery I had never solved, like a project that I had started and left incomplete because it was too frustrating.
When I went to slide my keycard in the reader outside my door, I heard a girlish giggle from his room across the hall. I half-turned, eyes locked on the door and heart pounding. I waited, wondering if my ears had been playing tricks, but then I heard it again, followed by the deep rumble of Zach’s voice, too quiet to know what he was saying.
I clenched my jaw and glared at my door, willing away the tears in my eyes by sheer force of will. I was not going to cry because he took a girl to his room. It would be ridiculous. Hadn’t I actually told him to do it? I didn’t expect him to listen, of course, but there it was. I told him to get drunk and high and have himself a roadie when I was pissed, and the bastard had actually done it. I knew who Zach was before I got into this insane arrangement, and I never expected him to change. He didn’t promise me anything, and I knew he had always been open to casual sex, as long as the person offering was clean and knew they were going to be a one-night-stand. I knew all of that, but it still stung.
I shut my door and leaned my back against it, sinking down to hold my knees against my chest.
At least I had solved one mystery for the night. I knew why Zach hadn’t put up a fight after what happened on stage, and why he had lost interest in finding out what color my panties were. Spoiler alert: they were black, because I had forgotten to pack the pink pair that matched my bra. Suddenly, black seemed like a fitting color. God knew it matched my mood.
Being cold to Zach the next day was as easy as breathing. All I had to do was call up the memory of those girlish giggles. I hadn’t heard anything after I closed my door, but I could imagine the sounds. Moans. Thumping. Him grunting or laughing as he fucked her. I could imagine it all, and it brought me back to those cold eye
s watching me from his beach house in Belvedere. He watched me while he fingered that girl just to see if he was getting to me.
Times hadn’t changed, apparently.
Brent sat down beside me on the tour bus. I was scribbling in a notebook, making about as much progress on a poem as Zach seemed to be making on his songwriting attempts.
“You writing Zach’s songs now?” he asked.
Zach was napping in one of the beds at the back of the bus, probably worn out after his long night with the fangirl he took back to his room. I hoped she was underage and he ended up in jail. I hoped she gave him an STD.
I peeled my eyes away from him, forcing myself to calm down. Operation do-over was not off to a great start, and taking what happened last night personally was a sure-fire way to turn this whole experience into yet another regret.
“He wishes,” I said.
Brent chuckled. “I remember you used to write poems back in school. They were good. You’ve still been at it?”
I shrugged. “They were never good. But thank you. And no, not really. I think I associated poems with Belvedere. Same with tennis. Once I moved away, I didn’t want anything to do with stuff that reminded me of that place.”
Brent nodded knowingly. “But now?” he asked, eying the notebook.
I felt my gaze wanting to drift to Zach again. I resisted. “Now I’m trying to put the past behind me.”
He gave me a searching look, waiting for me to say more, but I was done explaining myself. Brent was part of my twisted past, and I felt like he would be part of whatever I needed to do to get over it. I just didn’t know what part he would play.
Brent let his legs open a little wider until his knee brushed the outside of my thigh. I swallowed hard and almost gave in to my instinct to close my legs tighter to get away from his touch. Why should I, though? Zach obviously didn’t want more than casual sex from me. He definitely wasn’t planning on being exclusive. Why should I worry about what he would think if I liked Brent? Why should I worry about what he thought even if he did want us to be exclusive? Zach hadn’t earned that from me. Not by a long shot.
It still felt wrong, as much as I wanted to spite Zach, so I closed my legs tighter, shying away from Brent’s touch. I wasn’t going to use Brent to make Zach jealous. I had never been that kind of girl and I wasn’t going to start now.
“We don’t have a show for another couple days,” Brent said. “We’ll be in Pittsburg. My parents are from there. I could show you some of the sights, if you wanted.”
“No,” Zach said.
We both jumped a little. I didn’t hear him get up or see him coming closer, but he was looming over us now. The countryside rolled by behind him, pretty and green with mountains in the distance. Despite it being midday and sunlight flooded in through the windows of the bus, none of it seemed to touch his face. He looked at us from darkness, like even the sun was afraid to get too close to him.
“I’ll be showing Gardener Girl around Pittsburg. You’ll be fucking off, Brent. Maybe you can go raid the groupie bus again. It seemed to keep you busy enough before you got your dick hard for Gardener Girl.”
Brent tensed beside me, and I was reminded that he might seem like a saint next to Zach, but Brent was still a rock star who had been touring the world now for years. He probably brought just as many giggling fan girls into his hotel rooms at night as Zach.
At least he was nice to me, I reasoned. At least he didn’t try to hurt me.
“I can make my own decisions,” I said.
“Okay,” Zach said. “Then I need you to make the decision to come with me tonight when we get to Pittsburg. For your own good.”
I scoffed and shook my head. The sound of girlish laughter replayed in my memory, strengthening my resolve. “If you want to talk about what’s for my own good, then maybe you should just let me get the hell off this bus and call me an Uber. I could be back in Florida by tomorrow and carry on with my life. Without you.”
He glared. “Is that what you want? You know what would happen, don’t you?”
I glare right back because I know I can’t risk it. It feels like an echo of the past. Like my life is just a series of reflections where the future is only a slightly blurred version of the past, seen from a distance but still the same. Leave Belvedere or you know what happens. Don’t you, Gardener Girl? Leave tonight. Any questions?
“Okay,” Brent said. He stood up, squaring up with Zach. Taylor glanced up now, eyes vaguely interested but not alarmed, like this was business as usual. “I’ve known something was fucked up with this. Why would Aribella agree to come tag along as your muse? She obviously hates you. What are you holding over her? What’s the angle?”
Zach’s eyes never left mine, and there was a glint of cruelty there. “Tell him,” he said.
I swallowed. I didn’t want to admit how much power he had over me. Somehow, Zach knew that. “He’s paying me more than my old job paid,” I said. My voice sounded weak. Defeated.
Brent looked at me like he was expecting more. “That’s it?” he asked.
Zach gave him a triumphant shrug. “That’s it. Everybody needs to eat, right?”
16
Zach
Eight Years Ago
Gardener Girl was a problem. I thought breaking her and Brent up would be enough to satisfy me. But then I saw her in the trainer’s room after my asthma attack. She looked at me with a kind of concern I could get addicted to. She was a good girl, and I wanted so badly to have a taste of what that was like. I would never let it be more than a fling, of course, but I found myself craving those fevered hours with her. I wanted her dirty secrets. The smell of her sweat against my skin, the sound of her moans, and the flavor of her mouth. I wanted to know if she’d be loud or quiet, or if she’d try to cuddle and have pillow talk after.
I wanted it all, and that was dangerous, because my armor had always been that I didn’t care. Normal people can be hurt because the things they want can be taken away. The only things I’ve ever wanted either can’t be fixed or can’t be taken away. No one can bring my mom back. And no one can take away the revenge I’ll get against my father for replacing her with a woman barely older than me.
But Gardener Girl… Aribella. She can be taken from me. Brent already proved as much. I could keep everyone away from her if I tried, but there was only one way I could make sure I had her to myself. I couldn’t just throw her a wink and tell her to be in my room at tomorrow’s party. She wasn’t that kind of girl. She would want me to be real with her. To be open.
The only place I was real was in my music. I tried opening up once. A long fucking time ago, and I learned my lesson. I learned life was a lot easier if nobody knew where to sting me. If I gave the world cold, I’d get cold back. It was that simple. No surprises. No pain.
Gardener Girl was a wrinkle in my plan. She made me feel. No matter how much I closed myself off to her, she was a touch of warmth that threatened to thaw me out.
Brent was already sitting behind his drums in the sound studio at my house. Taylor was running late, as usual. I had converted what was supposed to be a theater room on the second floor into a professional sound studio. It had all the bells and whistles, so we always practiced here.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” I said, not coming all the way into the room. I leaned in the doorway, hoping Brent would understand the implied threat. He wasn’t leaving unless he came through me.
“Yeah?” he asked. He was fiddling with the tuning key on his snare drum, only giving me half of his attention.
“People are saying Gardener Girl fucked me while she was still dating you.”
He paused, looked up at me with unconcealed hatred in his eyes. “She didn’t?” he asked.
“Something tells me I would remember fucking her.”
“That’s a surprise. I think you’ve fucked half the school already. Can you remember all of them?”
“She’s different.”
“Yeah?” Brent asked, raising his
voice. “Is that how you justify fucking her behind my back? It wasn’t enough to break us up? You had to fuck her first?”
I gripped the doorframe until it felt like my fingers were going to punch through the wood. “Just tell me one thing. Was it you? Did you start the rumor?”
Brent only shook his head. “Fuck you, Zach.”
“You know she has a black eye? Some girl on the tennis team pelted her in the face with a ball because she thought Gardener Girl cheated on you.”
Brent tensed a little at that. “She’s okay though?”
“She looks like an abuse victim, but she’ll survive. Does that ease your conscience?”
“My conscience doesn’t need eased, asshole. I didn’t start the rumor.”
“Right,” I said. “Because you know if I found out it was you, I’d fucking kill you. You do know that, right?”
Brent met my eyes for a long moment until I thought he might shove the drums out of the way and charge me, but in the end, he looked away, and I knew it was him that had started the rumor.
17
Aribella
Eight Years Ago
My parents were out of town for two days. They rarely splurged on vacations, but it was their anniversary, so they were going to stay at a Disney hotel and hit up the theme parks the next morning. It didn’t sound like the most romantic anniversary idea to me, but maybe they just wanted to do something fun for a change.
Mandy had decided tonight was the perfect night to throw a party. At our house.
I was beyond stressed, but thankfully, the party had already been going for close to an hour now and it was a much more relaxed event than some of the craziness I’d seen and heard about at Zach’s parties. Most of the kids were people she had personally invited, and none of the guys from Zach’s band had come, which helped keep away the throngs of girls that seemed to follow everywhere they showed up, and then the guys that followed the throngs of girls, and so on.
Hate at First Sight Page 11