Hate (17 page)

“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.”