How to Date the Guy You Hate by Julie Kriss Page 0,44
not awkward.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
The lady at the inn—she seemed to really like me—gave me directions, and by the time Megan was due to come downstairs, I knew how to get back to the interstate. I pulled the car up to the front doors and waited, leaning against it and checking my phone.
Charlotte had texted once already this morning. Apparently, when it came to tormenting me, she was an early riser. I scrolled back through the texts she’d been sending me.
I talked to Deanna. What is going on?
It seems soon, Jason. Are you sure?
Who is she? Deanna says you didn’t say and no one knows about this.
I guess you’re still mad at me but I’m concerned. I do care about you. Apparently you were in a fight? Deanna said you had a bruise.
Sarah doesn’t know who this girlfriend is either. No one has heard you’re dating someone. Is this new?
You’re vulnerable right now, Jason. Please be careful.
It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so infuriating. But this was classic Charlotte. While I was deployed, her cousin got engaged to a guy Charlotte thought was no good for her. It had set something off in her, and she’d badgered the girl relentlessly about it. She’d talked to every family member repeatedly, talking about how worried she was. She organized a family intervention. The cousin had finally given in and put off the wedding. The last I heard, the wedding date was in limbo, delayed to probably never. Charlotte won.
When I first met Charlotte, she seemed like the kind of girl everyone liked. Tall, slim, blonde, pretty. I’d dated a lot of girls just like her, or so I thought. She seemed like she really cared. I was two months from my twentieth birthday.
From day one, I was her project. What did I want to do with my life? Where did I think I was going? What kind of plan did I have? I had just graduated as the golden boy of Eden High, and I hadn’t thought about any of those things, but I humored her, because she was right. I was done high school. It was time to figure out the rest of my life. I worked at the bank, like she suggested. I enlisted in the Marines. None of it was quite good enough for her. Close, but no cigar.
Unlike my mother, who put me on a pedestal, nothing about me was good enough for Charlotte. Not my family, because my mother had raised Holly and me alone. Not my friends, especially Dean, who she hated to the bottom of her soul, mostly because he did whatever the fuck he wanted and cared nothing about what anyone thought. Not my attitude or my ambition or my sense of humor. And, of course, not the sex.
I’d be so furious if someone fucked with my head like that, Megan had said. I’d be on a rage path. I hadn’t let on how close she’d come to the mark. I was mad. Mad enough to get fired from the bank and bounce college idiots from Puke Patrol. Mad enough to let my life drop out while I lived in an angry fog. The only saving grace was that Charlotte had decided I was hopeless, and after we broke up I was no longer one of her projects.
Until now.
I looked at her latest text, from this morning. Why aren’t you talking to me?
I’d give her one reply. Exactly one. There’s nothing to talk about, I wrote. It’s over.
There was another flurry after that, my phone vibrating, but I turned it off and put it in my pocket, because the doors were opening and Megan was coming out, bag in hand.
She was wearing worn jeans that sat just a little loose on her body. A sleeveless flowy top, the bohemian kind she liked to wear, white printed with little purple flowers. Flip flops on her feet, peeking from beneath her jeans. She’d tied her dark brown curls into a loose ponytail, and a couple of strands escaped down her long, white neck. She’d put on a little makeup, maybe something around the eyes, but that was it. A few silver rings on her fingers. She looked relaxed and sexy, like a woman who has spent the night getting properly, repeatedly, and unapologetically screwed, and doesn’t particularly care who knows it.
Her beauty was complete, in every part of her, and she didn’t even have to try. It was just