Hate

by Laurel Curtis

  “Hey there Mrs. Giadano, you’re looking incredibly lovely today.”

  Gram, the old broad, ate it right up.

  “Damn right I am.”

  Blane chuckled.

  “You know they used to call me Gumby back in the day.”

  “Oh yeah?” he asked, humoring her and leaning his shoulder into the jam of the open door with an easy sexiness that nearly brought me to my knees.

  “Oh yeah. Flexible as hell and you can put just about anything—”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I said, stepping in in a hurry.

  Jesus.

  Temporarily distracted by my tornado of a grandmother, I didn’t guard against my rush of feelings when I looked up and found myself staring right into Blane’s eyes.

  I’d liked them before, found they had a certain pull on my emotions from the first moment I’d met him, but now, having connected with him physically, it was more.

  And holy shit, that was scary.

  His grin didn’t falter, apparently better at keeping up his mystique in awkward situations than I was.

  “Hey, pretty girl,” he greeted casually, and I pretended it didn’t rip my fucking heart out. It was a botch job—I wouldn’t be up for an Oscar any time soon—but it got me through the moment.

  “What’s your name?” Gram cut in. Apparently, she didn’t remember him. A sudden, small wave of sadness washed over me. It had to be awful to lose your memories. I’d be lost without mine. Even the ones that gutted me.

  “Blane Hunt, ma’am,” he answered chivalrously. There was no hesitation at her lapse in knowledge and his eyes never left mine.

  “Ma’am,” Gram huffed out in indignation. Even at ninety she wasn’t ready to be made into an old lady.

  I had to laugh.

  “How are you?” Blane asked me. But I wasn’t the one who answered.

  “I’ve been better, Blane,” Gram offered, jumping on the chance to talk about herself. “You see, my granddaughter’s pretty, but she refuses to feed me. And I’m starving.”

  Me eyes narrowed at the same time that my mouth gaped. That little rat.

  A little lying rat!

  “Gram, that’s not true. I have food cooking right—” I argued, only to be cut off again.

  “Maybe you should take us somewhere. Treat us girls right. I know she,” she glanced at me, “doesn’t deserve it, but where I go, she goes.”

  Blane’s smile multiplied as he played along with the little backstabber.

  “I’d be happy to take you out to dinner, sweetheart. And if your granddaughter has to tag along, so be it.”

  “Great. Let me just go get my face on.” She spun her chair quickly, and once again, came super close to crushing every last one of the bones in my feet.

  At this rate, I would be crippled by the end of the week.

  “What are you doing?” I snapped as soon as she was out of earshot.

  “I’m taking the two of you to dinner,” he answered mock-innocently.

  “Jesus. No shit. You know what I’m talking about. What are you doing here? In New Jersey. At my house.”

  “I can’t think of a place I’d rather be.”

  “Still, he explains nothing,” I griped to the universe.

  As I turned back to face him, he murmured, “To be honest, I don’t think it needs an explanation.”

  “It does. We said all we wanted to say that morning.”

  “Maybe you did,” he countered easily. “But I didn’t.”

  My deep pull of air inflated my chest. “Jesus. I thought women were the ones who wouldn’t shut up about their feelings.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said with a chuckle. “You were always the one who avoided the issue. I’ve always had to push you to address it, and nothing has changed.”

  “Everything has changed,” I stressed, knowing we were talking about two different things.

  He opened his mouth to argue, but Gram didn’t give him the chance.

  “Let’s roll, handsome.” She came screeching to a halt between us, but she didn’t bother to acknowledge me.

  Blane’s eyes stayed on my face, the evidence of their weight heating the apples of my cheeks and bringing a noticeable flush to my skin. But I avoided his powerful eyes. I feared what I would find if I allowed myself to get lost in them.

  Perhaps, the truth.

  “Okay, darling,” he agreed, cementing him as her new favorite love interest. Gram had mentioned before how much she liked to be called “darling”.

  He helped her chair over the lip of the door, and then turned back to me. He lowered his voice so she wouldn’t hear, even though at her age you’d think it wouldn’t be necessary.

  “Why don’t you turn off the food I know you were cooking. Do what you can to salvage it, but if you can’t, I’ll cover the cost.”

  How silly. He wasn’t responsible for this. “Blane, you don’t have to give me anything.”

  “Yeah, but I want you to give me your time, so I’ll do whatever I can to make that easier. If you’re stuck working more hours to cover the cost of your grandmother’s every sudden change of heart, you’ll have less time to spend with me. See? Selfish.”

  “Blane, I really don’t think—”

  “Whoops,” he interrupted. “I think I hear a foxy lady calling for me. Meet you at the truck.”

  “Blane!” Damnit. “Blane Hunt!”

  Son of a bitch!

  My dark brown hair flew in an arc over my shoulder as I turned on my toes and headed for the kitchen, my attitude nothing short of anger personified.

  Stomping my feet like a petulant teenager, I cleared the door, rounded the island, and threw the knob to switch off the burner with a furious flick of my wrist.

  “Freaking Blane Hunt,” I ranted to myself. “He thinks he can just show up here, take over everything, take me and my grandmother out to dinner.”

  “Maybe you did,” I mocked, my voice high pitched and whiny and not at all like Blane. “But I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, well, too bad, Bucko,” I snapped aloud.

  A throat cleared behind me.

  “Shit.”

  “Impressive content memory, but the accent doesn’t really remind me of myself.”

  Turning to face him, I narrowed my eyes. “I thought I was meeting you at the truck.”

  “Yeah, well, see, I got to thinking as I was loading your grandmother in and buckling her seatbelt…”

  She made him buckle her seatbelt? Man, she really was a saucy old broad.

  “And I decided that if I left you alone in here too long, you might find a way to get out of it.”

  “How am I going to get out of it?” I scoffed. He already had my grandmother in the truck for cripes sake.

  “Oh, good. That means you haven’t come up with a plan yet. Come on,” he prompted, “Let’s go.”

  “Hey,” I protested, as he grabbed my upper arm.

  “All the burners turned off?”

  “What?” I asked before I processed the question. “Yes.”

  “Oven’s off?”

  “Yes!” I responded indignantly.

  “Great. Let’s just grab some shoes and you’re ready to go.”

  Stalling, I argued, “I need to change clothes. These aren’t my going out clothes. These are my staying in clothes. Because I thought I was staying in.”

  “You’ve never looked more beautiful,” he said as a way to appease me. Who knew if the bastard actually meant it, but I certainly didn’t care.

  Definitely.

  Not really.

  Only a little.

  Fuck.

  He put his hand to the small of my back and guided me down the hallway back toward the entryway. His touch wasn’t impersonal. In fact, it hinted quite strongly at his carnal knowledge of my body.

  I blushed despite myself.

  Double fuck.

  “Oh look!” he chimed, fake excitement making my ears bleed. “Flip flops. The perfect shoe for the season. And so easy to put
on!”

  “Can it already,” I snapped. “I’m headed toward the truck aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And you’re only doing it at a slightly slower crawl than a turtle.”

  “Don’t mock the turtles!” I yelled nonsensically. “Those things usually win the race.”

  He played right into my demented line of conversation. “No, not usually. The turtle won that one time. And it was because that rabbit was a lazy son of a bitch.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but he beat me to it. “And don’t try and cry that I shouldn’t say that because that rabbit is your best friend or some bullshit. The Whitney Lenox I know doesn’t make friends with many, and she certainly wouldn’t waste one of her few friendships on some lackadaisical rabbit.”

  “That’s funny. The Whitney Lenox I know has no friends.” It came out harsh even to my ears, and it took both of us a minute to figure out what to say.

  I was embarrassed by the truth, and he was still stuck in the deeper meaning of my words. My two very best friends, him and Franny, had both abandoned me, though in very different ways. And even though I’d had years to make new friends, I never really had. Acquaintances, sure. After work drinks with colleagues, yeah. But I’d never let anybody in the way I had them.

  It was a pathetic way to live my life.

  Even I had to admit that.

  But that didn’t make it untrue.

  It just made it something that needed changing.

  When he spoke again, his voice was absolute. “Whitney Lenox has a friend. Whether she wants him or not.”

  With no pause for a response, he forced me into my flip flops and ushered me out the door. His hand rested effortlessly at the small of my back and the tingle of its proximity ran all the way up my spine. He didn't move it until my ass met the soft leather of the passenger seat of his truck. And even then, it did it slowly and seemingly under protest.

  Unable to fight it, figuring it wouldn’t that big of a deal to give myself just one little thing, I lifted my eyes to his and let myself get lost in the swirls of blue.

  Lost in them, drowning so pleasurably that I’d never call for a rescue, I realized it was a mistake. Because I couldn’t look at him without letting him look at me. And my soul, my hurt, my very deep-seeded love was all there, burning bright and obvious.

  For one frightening second, I thought he was going to kiss me. And even scarier, I was going to let him.

  “Does no one want to feed the elderly anymore? Geez. Get in the truck, hot stuff,” Gram interrupted, saving me from myself and disappointing me at the same time.

  I hated my uncertainty.

  And I hated that in spite of that, I couldn’t seem to resist him.

  But, most of all, I loathed that I had a reason to.

  THE RIDE TO THE RESTAURANT would have been tense, but the old lady in the back just wouldn’t allow it. No, instead, she insisted on saying one ridiculous thing after another.

  By the time we got the restaurant, Blane and I practically had tears in our eyes from laughing so hard and trying to hide it.

  Now, after following the hostess to our table, Blane settled into the chair across from mine, with Gram nestled in between us.

  Just as she had orchestrated it.

  She may have been losing her mind, but she had enough of it left to mess with me. That much I knew.

  A comfortable silence descended on the table as we each perused our menus. Gram’s eyesight was still twenty twenty despite her ripening age.

  It was kind of nice having her around. As much as she was a pain in my ass, I had also kind of missed having her brand of entertainment.

  Just as I thought this to myself, I lifted my eyes off of my menu in order to study the oddity of her and Blane sitting with me.

  A smile crept onto her face, enhancing my own. That is, until, without preamble, she announced proudly to the room, “I’m peeing!”

  Blane’s eyes shot upward at once and a hesitant smile lifted just one corner of his mouth.

  Obviously, he wasn’t sure if he’d heard what he thought he had, but that only made one of us.

  I, for one, was certain of what I had heard.

  Gram was peeing.

  While sitting between us.

  In a restaurant.

  And she was proud of it.

  This was my life.

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” she offered to the horrified woman at the table next to us. “I just got these new diapers, and I finally have the freedom to really do whatever I want.”

  “I see where you get it,” Blane said on a nod to himself, looking directly at me.

  “You see where I get what?” I asked, incredulity dripping from every last syllable.

  “It. You’re attitude. This,” he said, doing the exact opposite of giving me an actual explanation while pointing between me and my grandmother.

  Of course, Gram was still trying to charm the woman at the table behind her. It wasn’t working. Her face said appalled, and her pallor said grossed out.

  I didn’t blame her.

  “You think I’m like my grandmother?” I whisper-shouted, just keeping myself from jumping out of my chair in outrage. “She just announced to the entire restaurant that she was peeing!”

  Bugging out my eyes, I watched as he laughed. “How is that like me?”

  “Well, you’re about a decibel shy of making your own scene, Elbow,” he pointed out, using my nickname as an extra incentive to make me have a full blown meltdown.

  Apparently, he liked the crazy.

  I forced myself to change my tone of voice to that of someone with composure and class. It was tough.

  “I’m not about to make a scene,” I argued, this time demurely.

  At that, he threw back his head and laughed openly. Rich and deep and all the way from the bottom of his toned belly. It wrinkled his eyes at the corners and puffed up his cheeks fully. His mouth was slightly open, the curve of his lips going as far as the stretch of his skin would allow. His throat bobbed and the tan skin flexed as his veins moved in and out.

  It was the kind of laugh that made you fall in love with someone.

  And it was even worse if you’d already fallen.

  “You’re beautiful,” Blane whispered, and my eyes shot directly from the table to his.

  Gram chose that moment to get over the novelty of her diapers. “Thank you, dear.”

  Blane just smiled again, the slight shake of his head barely visible.

  “So, Blane, what do you do for a living?” Gram asked, obvious to any and all tension hanging precariously between us.

  He turned to face her, but not without giving me a wink first. It was bold and in my face and the opposite of subtle. I didn’t understand how he could be so fucking at ease sitting here at this table after the night we’d spent together. After what I’d said to him the next morning.

  Jesus. I had to fight to keep from hanging my head in shame right there at the table. I’d been awful. And still, he was here, taking my batty, old grandmother out to dinner. Listening to her talk about her incontinence and smiling.

  What kind of alternate universe was this?

  “I’m a Federal Air Marshall, ma’am. But I’m actually taking a decent vacation right now. I had some time stored up and earned some more in a recent incident.” He glanced to me, keeping his descriptions very PC for my grandmother’s benefit. “I plan to spend a lot of time here.”

  Looking back to me, he finished, “With both of you.”

  Ah, crap.

  “Blane,” I started to argue, but Gram talked over me.

  “That’s wonderful! I can’t tell you how nice it’ll be to have someone worthwhile around.”

  “Gram!”

  “Right,” she said, barely acknowledging me. “Besides my granddaughter.”

  “I think your granddaughter is one of the most worthwhile people I know,” Blane told her.

  I almost blushed at the compliment.

  That wa
s, until he used it to trap me.

  “That’s why I was hoping to get her to agree to go out on a date with me. Maybe you can help me convince her?”

  He fought dirty. The bastard.

  “Well, you can start by talking to her instead of me. That’s the best advice I can give. Us women, we like to be talked to directly,” she schooled him, completely surprising me by being on my side.

  I couldn’t hold it in. I laughed.

  “Right,” he said with a smile, turning to face me. “What do you say, Whit? Go on a real date with me?”

  “What’s a real date?” I questioned, giving him a hard time. “What’s that even mean?”

  “I think he means without the old woman as a chaperone, dear,” Gram translated helpfully. “He needed to talk directly to you, but you need to turn down the frigidity.”

  Now Blane was laughing at me, short staccato bursts of mirth-filled air. The old bird sure knew how to throw everyone under the bus.

  I gritted my teeth against saying something biting. All that would do was prove her point.

  “It does mean that it would be just the two of us. And it means that it would be romantic. Not just two old friends hanging out, shooting the shit.” He paused, looked at my grandmother, and then attempted to apologize for his language. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  He shouldn’t have bothered.

  “What’d you do? Fart?”

  Ah, man. Smartly, we both ignored her.

  Instead, Blane kept explaining his definition of date. “There might even be flowers involved, or if you’re really lucky, chocolate.”

  “I know what a date is. I’ve been on one before.”

  “One?” he asked, the corner of his mouth curving up.

  “More than one. Jesus.”

  “You dated Jesus?” Gram interjected. “I must be older than I thought.”

  Again, I ignored her.

  “Convince me,” I declared, like some kind of idiot. The man I was in love with was asking me on date, I had basically no other options, and I was still making him jump through hoops.

  Somebody shock me. Strap me to a chair, hook up the electrodes, and throw the damn switch.

  “Convince me, right now. Tell me why I should go on a date with you. Tell me something good and mean it. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll consider it.”