Hate

by Laurel Curtis

  Two options.

  Fighting for supremacy in the ultimate battle. My decision would surely shape my future, both romantic and regular, and for five whole days, I hadn’t been able to choose. I’d packed and unpacked the box, prepped and un-prepped for a hair transformation.

  One meant holding on. The other meant letting go.

  And I just couldn’t seem to commit to either one.

  How do you let go of the person you’re in love with?

  I didn’t have the answer.

  But how do you hold on to someone who’ll never love you back?

  That answer might have been worse.

  Avoiding the real subject, I explained, “I’ve been thinking about a change. Going darker with my hair. What do you think?”

  “I think whatever you think. If you don’t like it, color can always be changed back. That’s what all these girls are going to cosmetology school for. So they can change your color like the leaves for the season and get free cover ups of their own gray hairs.”

  I moved into the bathroom, evaluating myself in the mirror and twirling a hunk of brownish-blond hair around my index finger.

  The lighter strands seemed to glow in the light as I moved and flexed it. The girl reflected looked like me and moved like me, but the feeling I got when I looked at myself was decidedly devoid of me.

  As a lump formed in my throat, I bit my bottom lip and forced myself to swallow.

  I needed a change. I needed a rejuvenation. I needed something to wake me up, make me feel alive again. And I needed it to happen soon.

  I could spend my time waiting and wishing, or I could take the bull by the horns, and steer my own destiny.

  But that didn’t mean I could have anything I wanted. Naïveté would do me no favors.

  It hadn’t in the past, and it more than wouldn’t in the future.

  I looked up, meeting Gram’s questioning eyes in the reflection of my bathroom mirror. “I think it’s time to make a change.”

  She heaved a sigh. Doubt swirled through her chocolate eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

  “How are you at dying hair?”

  She smiled, just slightly. “I don’t have much experience, but your Gram can do absolutely anything.” She giggled. “And more importantly, if I screw it up, I know a girl who can fix it.”

  I wished everything was as easy to fix as bad hair. You could color over it, cut it different, or put extensions in. And if all else failed, time would erase any mistakes. The positive outlook for this decision was nowhere near as definite.

  “Sit down,” she instructed pointing to the closed toilet seat. The sound of the paper box ripping echoed in the bathroom as she opened it up and started reading the instructions.

  That act alone really threw me for a loop. Gram wasn’t a rule follower.

  “You’re actually reading the instructions?”

  She shrugged casually. “You’re the one keeping me in Soaps for now. As long as I’m getting something out of you, I figure it pays to try not to screw this up.”

  She squirted the ingredients into the bottle provided, covering the open nozzle of the top with her finger before shaking it, the sleeve of her loose sweater whooshing back and forth as she did.

  Grabbing the clean towel hanging on the rack in front of me, I wrapped it around my shoulders, making sure to pull each and every strand of hair free.

  “What’s it like?” I asked without actually asking the real question.

  “What’s what like?” she replied, understandably confused but not discouraged.

  “To be in love with someone and know that they love you back.”

  She moved the bottle to my head, sectioning off a part of hair and starting without even warning me. I guess there really was no turning back.

  Her heavy breath moved swiftly against my skin, the sudden burst of it making the hairs on my arms stand up on end.

  “It’s…powerful…and completely debilitating all at the same time. It’s ecstasy and agony, and it’s one of the single most terrifying feelings in the world.” She moved mindlessly to the next section of hair, her gloved fingers rubbing softly into my scalp. “It’s safety and danger, and the thought of living without it after you’ve had it is almost enough to make you stay away. But only almost. It’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever experienced.”

  “I want to have that,” I said softly, the feel of the soft denim at my knees soothing my stroking thumbs.

  “You already do,” she declared immediately and without apprehension.

  My disbelieving eyes sought her face just as quickly.

  “Your mom, your dad, and me.”

  I appreciated her point, but it wasn’t the same. I looked back down at the threadbare knees of my jeans, picking at the loosest thread with my thumb and forefinger.

  “You’ll never notice that someone loves you, if you don’t fully love yourself.”

  “Pfft,” I breathed. “I totally love myself. I’m awesome.”

  I didn’t realize that no matter how good of an actress I was, I wasn’t selling it to anyone in the room but myself.

  A smile lifted the age completely off of her face. “You are awesome. Just remember what I told you. Maybe one day it’ll make sense.”

  WHEN SHE FINISHED WITH THE dye, I let it sit for the recommended twenty minutes and then jumped in the shower to rinse it. It looked like I got in a fight with a blob of brown slime.

  Fortunately, it washed off and blended perfectly with the moisture from my tears. With the way I was finding out I was, I would have cried either way.

  After blow drying it fully, I moved into my room and finished packing up the box, letting my memories of Blane run through my mind on a loop as I did.

  When I closed the flaps of the lid, I made a vow to close away the memories.

  Shoving it deep into the back of my closet with my foot, I finally moved to the mirror to appraise my new look.

  The strands of dark brown stood out against the peach of my skin and highlighted the normally dull blue of my eyes. I admired my attributes diligently, assessing it from an unemotional point of view.

  And, as I stood there long into the night, I almost convinced myself that I loved to see the old me go.

  July 2014

  DON’T LOOK FOR WHAT IF. Embrace what is.

  “I’M LOOKING FOR SOMEONE ADVENTUROUS. I love to get out, hike, explore, travel all over the place. You know, really experience life,” my date was saying, his inflection passionate and his eyes warm. He was hot. Tall. Dark hair. Rich amber eyes.

  And yet, I couldn’t help but think that all the things he was saying were the complete opposite of me.

  Sure, I didn’t want someone who bored me to tears, but I wanted someone I could relax with. Someone who wouldn’t expect me to climb Mt. Everest every weekend, or travel to the villages of Haiti to save starving children.

  Not that those things weren’t admirable, but they were so grand.

  I wanted someone whose blandness perfectly matched mine. Someone who didn’t try to wine and dine me or impress me with fancy things.

  I wanted to get to know the man behind the stuff, the couch-sitter underneath the mountain climber.

  I wanted someone who let me be me, and because we fit so well, I could just let him be him.

  I didn’t think that was all too much to ask.

  But clearly, single with no prospects at thirty, I wasn’t an authority on the subject.

  The best suited matches weren’t necessarily opposites, they just had a chemistry that vibed. Something that clicked and flowed. Something ripe with compatibility.

  Mike wasn’t the right guy.

  But, because I was a real bitch, I wasn’t going to tell him that. At least not yet. I didn’t feel like doing some awkward dance where we both knew things were over, but we stuck around to finish dinner anyway.

  He’d look at me with a disdainful eye, especially if he had already offered to pay for the meal, and I’d try to avoid the
topic all together.

  In the end I’d end up here even longer than I would have if I’d just kept my mouth shut, laughed slightly at his dumb jokes, and politely avoided any kind of arrangement for a second date at the end of the night.

  It’d been about six months since I last had sex, and guessing from the pattern I had been on lately, it wouldn’t be long before I was pretending things were even better than I was right now, just for a chance to clear the cobwebs out of my pipe, so to speak.

  I’d prefer to find something meaningful rather than having sex with random, not-quite-right-for-me guys, but we weren’t living in a dream world.

  Sometimes people never met their soulmate, and they spent the rest of their life single.

  I could see that being me far too easily, a real spinster, complete with the cats and everything, to avoid the chance at sex when it finally came along.

  Okay, actually, there wouldn’t be any cats. I was far too lazy to get stuck cleaning out some feces filled liter box several times a week.

  But the point was still valid. I didn’t want to be an eighty year old spinster virgin.

  Talk about a tale for the ages.

  The ages. But not for the grandkids. Because there wouldn’t be any.

  “Yeah, experience life,” I parroted, just stopping myself from rolling my eyes at my own lameness. If he was going to stay until the end of dinner, I was going to have to do better than that.

  “That’s really admirable that you like to stay active, look after your health so well,” I added, the bullshit so thick it was a wonder I could lift my greasy piece of fried chicken to my mouth.

  “Thanks,” he said, looking at the chicken as I set it back down on my plate. “What do you like to do?”

  Now, I said I would pretend well enough to get through the evening, but I didn’t say I was going to lie and lead the poor guy on. “I love food. So eating is always a good work out,” I attempted to joke. He didn’t seem that amused.

  “And well, I really like to read. And watch TV if you want the truth. Mostly really guilty pleasure stuff like Naked and Afraid and The Real Housewives of Wherever.”

  “Naked and what?” he asked, confused.

  “Oh, it’s really good stuff. So there are all of these people out there who are super into honing their survival skills. In fact, maybe that’d be something you’d be into?” He gave me a blank stare. “No? Okay, anyway. So they sign up to be on this show, where they normally get paired with some other so-called expert and get dropped off in some Bumble-eff location. And they’re naked. Then they have to survive for some stupid amount of time without tapping out and saying the metaphorical Uncle or whatever. But most of the time they fail, which is always fun. Like this one guy,” I kept rambling, “got really bad sunburn on his junk and became, like, totally useless. The girl he was with had to pretty much carry both of them the whole time…”

  When I stopped focusing on what I was saying and instead looked at his face, I realized he thought I was crazy for actually watching that kind of show. His eyebrows had swallowed his forehead and the corner of his mouth had just barely curled up in disgust. So I wrapped it up.

  “Anyway, you get the idea.”

  Way to fucking kill it, Whit.

  God, this guy couldn’t stand me either.

  “Look, I think you’re a really nice guy, but see, I can see the look on your face, and I think it’s pretty clear how you feel about me. And hey, that’s probably a good thing. Because the furthest I’m looking to travel in the near future is to the West Coast. Or Perkins. For some pie,” was what I should have said.

  But I didn’t. Rather, I smiled like he wasn’t looking at me like the whore he’d picked up in Vegas but thought didn’t count because Vegas was Vegas.

  Nope, I wasn’t going to fit into his long term plans, but I was still sporting a 34D, so he wouldn’t mind giving a good titty fuck a try.

  Be polite but distant I coached myself. I was up for one night stands but only with guys who at least pretended to like it when I rambled.

  The awkward silence made me play with my fingers moving my thumb from one to the next and back again before making them do a jazz performance under the cover of the table cloth.

  If I were a man, it probably would have looked like I was yanking one out.

  Shit. Maybe it did anyway.

  That would have been a fun surprise for Mike. Hey, look! I’ve got a penis!

  Now that would be a story for the grandkids.

  “You’re so sexy,” she said in her unnaturally deep voice. Her hands felt bigger than normal, but I figured, hey, the better to service me with.

  Whoops. It seemed that while I’d been having a made up conversation between Mike and the transvestite version of me, he’d been trying to have one with the real me.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled with shame. There was nothing else I could really do. “I just have a headache, I think,” I pretended, going for the most painless excuse and doing it before he could get in another word edgewise. I wanted this to be over.

  “Would you mind if we cut our night a little short? I think it’d really do me a lot of good to go home and put a hot compress on my neck.” And my vibrator on my vagina. You know, same thing.

  “Sure, Whitney,” he agreed easily, the relief in his eyes only flickering out when his greedy eyes moved back to my breasts.

  Obviously, Mike liked the ladies. Not many men didn’t.

  “I just hope you feel better soon,” he added, his eyes just barely prying themselves free of the chains that were apparently directly connected to my nipples.

  I couldn’t even imagine what he would have been like if I’d been wearing a thinner bra. Thank God Victoria knew how to keep a Secret.

  “Yeah, they’re pretty chronic,” I lied on a shrug as we stood from the table and awkwardly waded our way to the doors of the restaurant.

  Fuck but I hated dating.

  Failure tally: 216. Or some really big freaking number. I was tired.

  And I was tired of being tired.

  Most of all, I hated that there was no end in sight.

  AFTER THE DATE WITH MIKE, this phone call with my mother seemed like some kind of sign from destiny. I needed to do something different, and taking care of Gram would definitely liven things up.

  “She says you’re the only one of us worth spending any time with, and she’s refusing to bathe until you get here. And I swear to God, she’s doing it way too well. It’s like the fish tank in Finding Nemo in this place, and your father says that if it lasts for another week he’s moving out,” my mom wheezed out in a rush.

  Gram was getting to her, and in true Gram fashion she was coming up with some pretty funny shit to threaten her daughter with.

  “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” I replied, trying to smother my laugh in the back of my fist.

  “ME? Exaggerate? I think not.”

  Yeah, because she’d never done that before. Even the thought of it was preposterous. Poverty would ensue as a direct result of my accusation.

  “I wish I were kidding, Whitney. I really do. But she’s taken it to a whole other level, and after thirty-three years of hard labor, I’m not willing to give up on my marriage now.”

  “Your marriage to dad hasn’t been that much work,” I reasoned, desperate to find a way out of this. It’s not like I didn’t have a job or responsibilities.

  True, I didn’t have kids or a man who loved me, but my life still mattered.

  No really. It did.

  I was a counselor at Jersey Central Hospital and moonlighted at the local women’s shelter. I liked to specialize in grief and loss. It was amazing how many people were struggling with the loss of someone or something, whether it was 30 minutes or 30 years ago.

  The intensity of grief may fade over time, but it never goes away.

  I’d had thirteen years to learn that lesson all for myself.

  Those girls counted on me. And I didn’t have it in me to let them down.

>   “Send her to me, then,” I countered, hoping that if Gram wanted to spend her time with me, she could at the very least come here instead of expecting me to go to Florida.

  “You’re welcome to have her live up there with you if you’re willing to take that on, but you’ve got to come get her and bring her back yourself. Your father and I leave for the cruise on the fifteenth. You can take her for the week as a trial period.”

  “She’s not software, Mom. She’s your mother. A trial period?”

  “Trust me,” she said through a deep breath. “Don’t overcommit before you know what you’re dealing with.”

  I knew it was tough. I could understand what my parents were going through, but Gram had done a lot for me during some of the toughest times of my life.

  Now it was my turn to be there through hers.

  “I’ll come get her before your cruise. Just give me a couple of days to arrange it with work and get on a flight.”

  “Sounds good to me. It’ll be good to see you. It’s been too long.”

  That was a thinly veiled guilt trip. She didn’t lay it on thick, but the spread was there all the same.

  “I know. I’ve been busy, but it’ll be good to see you.”

  “If we can’t have grandkids, at the very least we can see you every once in a while,” she added nonchalantly.

  And there was the rest of the guilt.

  Like I wanted to be single and searching at thirty. Like I didn’t dream of having kids of my own and someone warm and strong to come home to.

  Like I didn’t wish there was someone around who was tall enough to change the freaking lightbulbs.

  It was time to end this delightful call.

  “Right. I’ll let you know when I have a flight. Bye, mom.”

  Cloaking her words in another deep breath, she gave in. “Alright. Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  “WHAT’S UP?” THE SECRETARY IN my administrative section of the hospital, Gwen, asked as she watched me pack up some of the important things off of my desk at the end of the day.

  “I’m taking a few weeks off,” I explained. “I’m flying down to my parents to get my grandmother and bring her back with me. Her health is starting to deteriorate, and I’m the only member of our family who can really stand her.”