The Hating Game (10 page)

“Did you drive?”

“Jerry needs another weekend. The mechanic. I'll get a bus.”

He moves me forward; a heaving, sweating marionette. My mouth tastes like acid. His grip drops from my neck to loop a finger into the loop on the back of my jeans, the other on my elbow. I can feel his knuckle pressing above my butt crack and I laugh out loud.

The stairs to the basement parking lot are steep and I balk, but he pushes me on, hands tightening. He uses his swipe card to get us in and steers me steadily toward his black car. I can smell car fumes and oil. I can smell everything. I dry-retch behind a pole and he hesitantly lays a hand between my shoulder blades. He rubs it around a little. I shudder through another volley of nausea.

Joshua guides me to the passenger seat. He slings the bag I'd forgotten about into the backseat. He idles the car and I glimpse myself in a side mirror, my head rolled to the side, a dark flush on my cheekbones, gleaming with sweat, my mascara smudged.

“Now. Are you gonna be sick in the car, Shortcake?” He doesn't sound impatient, or annoyed. He opens my window a few inches.

“No. Maybe. Well, possibly.”

“Use this if you need to,” he tells me, handing me an empty
takeout coffee cup. He puts the car into reverse. “Tell me where to go, then.”

“Go to hell.” I start laughing again.

“So that's where you came from.”

“Shuddup. Go left.” I navigate him to my apartment building. I keep my eyes closed, and count my breaths, and do not vomit. It is quite an achievement.

“Here. Out front is fine.”

He shakes his head and in defeat I direct him to my empty parking space. He has to help me climb out of the car and I sag against him. My cheek momentarily rests on something like his chest. My hand grips something like his waist.

He hits the button and we stand at opposite sides of the elevator car, and the Staring Game is overlaid with hot, sweaty memories of the last time we did this together.

“Your eyes were like a serial killer that day.” I must have vomited out my filter.

“So were yours.”

“I like your T-shirt. So much. It's magnificent on you.”

He's mystified as he looks down at himself. “It's nothing special. I . . . like yours too. It's as big as a dress.”

The elevator doors opens. I lurch out. Unfortunately, he follows.

“I'm here,” I lean on my door. He digs my keys from my bag and unlocks the door.

I've never seen anyone so desperate to be invited inside. His head pokes in farther. His hands are hanging on to the doorframe like he's about to fall in.

“It's not what I expected. It's not very . . . colorful.”

“Thank you, good-bye.” I push into the kitchen and seize a glass. Then I drink straight from the faucet.

“I think we could find an after-hours clinic,” Joshua says behind me, and takes the glass before I can drop it. He pushes my toaster straight against the wall and to fill in the awkward silence he folds a dishcloth. His fingernail picks at a crumb glued to the countertop. Oh man, he's one of those people who love to clean. He wants to roll up his sleeves and bleach and scrub.

“It's so messy, isn't it?” I point at a mug with a lipstick mark. He looks at it longingly and we simultaneously begin to try to get past each other in the tiny space.

“Let me take you to a doctor.”

“I need to lie down. That's all.”

“Is there anyone you want me to call?”

“I don't need anyone,” I announce proudly. I hold my hand out for my key. He holds it out of reach.
I don't need anyone to look after me. I can get through this. I'm alone in this world
.

“Alone in this world? So dramatic. I'll go to the drugstore and see what I can get you.”

“Sure, sure. Have a nice weekend.”

As the door snicks shut, I reconfirm that my apartment is a bit of a disaster zone, cluttered, and yes, a little colorless. My dad calls it the Igloo. I haven't had enough time yet to put my stamp on the place. I've been too busy. The Smurf cabinet takes up a large part of the living room wall, dark without the special lights switched on. Thank goodness Joshua left.

My bed looks like I've been having disturbing, sexual dreams, which is accurate. The sheets are all rumpled and twisted, and on the side where a man should be is strewn with books. Lingerie straps and Smurf-patterned underwear peek out of drawers like lettuce from a burger. I take the copy of Joshua's planner from my nightstand and hide it.

My shower is wonderful, torturous, endless. I turn it cold and freeze. I turn it hot and burn inside my skin. I drink the spray. I goop a big pile of shampoo on the top of my head and let it rinse away. An indication I must be near death is I can't be bothered to condition.

My head spins with nonsensical images, and I lean against the tiles and remember what it was like to lean against a tree with Joshua Templeman shielding me with his body.

In the privacy of my mind I can imagine whatever I want, and they aren't progressive, twenty-first-century thoughts.

They're depraved, brutal cavewoman thoughts. In my mind, he's electric with the animal instinct to protect me, his heavy muscle braced over my body. He absorbs each impact and it is his privilege. He's injected sharp and hard with nature's superdrug, testosterone.

I'm wrapped in him, safe from anything the world wants to throw at me. Anything painful or cruel will have to get through him before it has any chance of touching me. And it will never happen.

“Alive?”

I scream when I realize that resonating voice isn't in my imagination and cling to the tiles.

“Don't come in!” I did close the door. Thank you, guardian angels. I cross my arms over all of my X-rated zones.

“Of course I won't,” he snaps.

“I am completely naked. Bruises . . .” I'm a Monet watercolor; purple water lilies floating in green. He says nothing.

“Well, go out. Into the living room.”

My skin hurts when I towel myself. I crack the bathroom door open and hear silence. I scurry out and find underwear, a heinous
beige bra, shorts, and an old crappy pajama top with a picture of a cute dinosaur on it, his drowsy eyes half closed. Underneath him reads:
SLEEPYSAURUS
.

I'm naked and putting on clothes, separated from Joshua by only by a wall. I love you, wall. What a good wall. I toss myself so hard into bed the mattress squeaks, and it's the last thing I hear.

I
WAKE UP
in a volcano. “No! No!”

“I'm not poisoning you. Quit squirming.” Joshua's hand is behind my neck as he presses two pills onto my tongue. I swallow water and then he lowers me flat.

“My mother always gave me lemonade. And she'd sit with me. Whenever I woke up, she'd still be there. Did yours?” I sound like I'm five years old.

“My parents were too busy on shift looking after other sick people to do that stuff for me.”

“Doctors.”

“Yep, except me.” An edge in his voice denotes a sore topic.

I feel his hand on my forehead, fingers light and stiff. “Let's do a temperature check.”

“I feel so fucking stupid.” My voice is garbled due to the thermometer he's put into my mouth. He must have bought it, because I don't own one. I'm currently inside a moment destined to become the most cringe-worthy memory of my life.

“You'll never let me live this down.” That's what I try to say. Thanks to the thermometer it comes out like I've got a head injury.

“Sure I will. Don't chew the thermometer,” he replies quietly, taking it out of my mouth.

“We don't want you to get over one hundred four.” In the low evening light, his eyes are darkened navy as he assesses me almost clinically, before smoothing his hand over my forehead
again, softly, not checking my temperature. My pillow is adjusted a little. His eyes are not the man I know.

“Okay. Please stay for a minute. But you can leave if you want.”

“Lucy, I'll stay.”

When I eventually dream, it's about Joshua sitting on the edge of my mattress, watching me sleep.

I
'm vomiting. Joshua Templeman is holding a large Tupperware container under my face—the one I usually carry cakes to work in. I can smell the sweet-plastic residue of icing and eggs. I throw up more. His wrist is holding up my limp head, my hair gathered in his fist.

“This is so disgusting,” I groan in between heaves. “I'm so—I'm so—”

“Shh,” he replies and I fall asleep, shuddering and gasping, while he wipes my face with something cold and damp.

The clock says 1:08
A.M.
when I sit upright again. A wet compress falls into my lap. I jerk in fright at the weight on the bed next to me.

“It's me,” Joshua says. He's sitting against my headboard with his thumb in a Smurf price guidebook. He's got no shoes on and his socked feet are casually crossed at the ankles. The other books have been stacked neatly on my dresser.

“I'm so cold,” I chatter. I put my hand into my hair; it's still damp from my shower. He shakes his head. “You have a fever. It's getting worse.”

“No, cold,” I argue. I stumble into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. I pee, flush, and then realize how unladylike I was. Oh,
well. He's seen and heard almost everything now. There's nothing left to do but fake my own death and start a new life.

I use my finger to rub some toothpaste on my tongue. Gag. Repeat.

I hear cotton unfurling, the snap of elastic, and the creak of mattress, and through the crack in the door I watch him put fresh sheets on the bed. I'm a soggy, disgusting mess, but I still manage to watch his bent-over backside.

“How You Doing?” He looks at me under his arm and hauls the last corner of the sheet into place. My lucky mattress is being manhandled.

“Oh, just fine. How You Doing?” I fall into bed, and claw the blankets up onto me. The mattress depresses heavily beside me and his hand is on my forehead.

“Ah, that's nice.”

His hand feels like the sort of temperature I should be striving for. Everything we do is tit for tat, so I raise my hands up and put them on his forehead.

“Okay.” He is amused.

I'm touching my colleague Joshua on the face. I'm dreaming. I'll wake up on the bus with him sneering at the trail of drool on my chin. But a minute ticks by, and I don't.

I slide my hands down, over sandpaper grit on his jaw, remembering how he cradled my face in the elevator. No one has ever held me like that. I open my eyes and I could swear he shivers. I touch his pulse. It touches me back.

I have my hands on his throat now, and I remember how badly I wanted to strangle him once. I spread my hands lightly around his neck, just to check the fit, and he narrows one eye.

“Go ahead,” he tells me. “Do it.”

His throat is way too big for my tiny hands. I feel a tension
shimmering through him, a tightening in his body. There's a sound in his throat.

I'm hurting him. Maybe I'm strangling him to death right now. Color is sweeping up his neck. When he pins me with his eyes, I know something's coming. I am not prepared when it happens.

The world explodes apart as he begins to laugh.

He's the same person I stare at every weekday but lit up. He's plugged into the mains and electric. Humor and light radiate from him, making his colors glow like stained glass. Brown, gold, blue, white. It's a crime I've never seen these smile lines before. His mouth is in an easy curve, perfect teeth and a faint dimple bracketing each corner.

Each laugh gusts from him in a husky, breathless rush, something he can no longer hold in, and it's as addictive to me as the taste of his mouth or the smell of his skin. His amazing laugh is something I need now.

If I'd ever thought he was good-looking before, in passing or noticed in irritation, I never knew the full story. When Josh smiles, he is blinding. My heart is pounding and I frantically catalog this moment in the half-light. It's the only one I'll get, while delirious with fever.

If only I could hold on to this moment. I already feel the sadness that will hollow me out when it ends. I want to tell him,
Don't leave yet.
My fingers must be flexing, because he laughs until the mattress is shaking beneath us. A diamond wet sparkle of light in the corner of his eye is a bullet to my heart. I'll be able to replay this beautiful, impossible moment in my memory when I'm a hundred years old.

“Go ahead, kill me, Shortcake,” he gasps, wiping his eye with his hand. “You know you want to.”

“So bad,” I tell him, like he once told me. I've got a tightening in my own throat and I can barely get the words out. “So bad, you have no idea.”

M
Y PAJAMAS ARE
soaked with sweat when I jolt awake and there is a third person in my bedroom. A man I've never seen before. I begin screaming like an injured monkey.

“Calm down,” Josh says into my ear. I scramble into his lap and press my face into his collar bone, huffing his cedar scent so hard I probably suck out his ghost. I'm about to be taken to a scary medical facility, away from the safety of my bed and these arms.

“Don't let them, Josh! I'll get better!”

“I'm a doctor, Lucy. How long and what symptoms?” The man puts on some gloves.

“She wasn't one hundred percent this morning. High color, distracted, and she got worse throughout the day. Visibly sweaty since lunchtime, and she didn't eat. Vomiting at five
P.M.
”

“And then?” The doctor continues to select things from his case, lining them on the end of my bed. I watch suspiciously.

“Delirious by eight. Trying to strangle me with her bare hands by one thirty. Burning up closer to one hundred four, and now she's one hundred five point six.”

I squeeze my eyes shut when the unfamiliar rubber hands feel the glands in my throat. Josh rubs my arms soothingly. I'm sitting between his thighs now, feeling his solid weight behind my shoulder blades. My own human armchair. The doctor presses his fingertips into my abdomen and I make crying sounds. My top is peeled up a few inches.

“What in the hell happened here?” They both simultaneously let out a sympathetic hiss of breath.

“We had a paintball day at work. Even my back isn't as bad as this.” Josh's fingers stroke the skin and I sweat even more. “Poor Shortcake,” he says in my ear. There's no sarcasm.

“Have you eaten out at any restaurants?”

I wrack my brains. “Thai takeout for dinner. Not today. Yesterday maybe.”

When the man frowns it's so familiar. “Food poisoning is a possibility.”

“Could be a virus,” Josh argues. “The time frame is a little long.”

“If you're so capable of diagnosing her, why even call me?”

They begin bickering about my symptoms. To my ears, they sound like guys talking about sports, and the city's current viruses are the teams. I watch them through slitted eyes. I didn't even know doctors would do house calls, especially at two thirty-nine in the morning. He's midthirties, tall, dark haired, blue eyed. He's clearly thrown a jacket over his pajamas.

“You're good-looking,” I tell the doctor. My lost filter should be a secondary diagnosis.

“Wow, she must
really
be delirious,” Josh says acridly, wrapping his arm across my collarbones. The squeeze renders me immobile.

“Funny, he's usually called the good-looking one.” The doctor says it wryly as he searches in a kit bag at the foot of the bed. “Oh, calm down, Josh.”

“You're his BROTHER,” I say in childlike wonder when the rusted cogs in my brain clunk into place. “I thought he was an experiment gone wrong.”

They look at each other and Josh's brother laughs. “She's so cute.”

“She's . . .” I feel Josh shake his head. He adjusts me a little against his chest, and my fevered brain interprets it as a snuggle.

“I'm pathetic. He tells me constantly. What's your name?”

“I'm Patrick.”

“Patrick Templeman. Holy shit. You're the actual Dr. Templeman.”

I'm still sitting in Josh's lap, my head in the curve of his neck, probably covering him in sweat. I try to struggle off but I'm held tight.

“I am indeed Dr. Templeman. One of them, anyway.” The amusement fades from his face and he coughs and begins to turn away. I catch his sleeve to try to see how much of Josh is in his features. He stills obediently, but his eyes flick to Josh, who is tense as a brick wall behind me.

“Sorry, yes. Josh is better looking.” There's a pause before both brothers laugh. Patrick isn't remotely offended and Josh's arm relaxes.

“Can you tell me embarrassing things about him?”

“When you're feeling better, you bet. Keep her fluids up, Josh. She's small enough that she'll dehydrate.”

“I know.” Together they coax me to swallow a sour medicine. I am laid flat against the bed and the two leave the room, shutting the door, but their voices still reach me.

“You would have been good at this,” Patrick says, rattling in his medical kit. “You've done all the right things for her.” Josh sighs heavily. I'm sure he's just crossed his arms.

“Don't get defensive. So, next hard topic. Were you going to give me an RSVP? Ever?”

“I was going to.” He's lying.

“Well, you can give me one now. And don't pretend you don't know the date; I know for a fact Mom gave you the invite in person. We didn't want it to go ‘missing' like the engagement party invite.”
Josh, you little weasel.

Patrick is thinking the same thing. “RSVP right now. Mindy needs to know. For such minor details as catering. Seating.”

“I'm busy at the moment,” Josh tries, but Patrick cuts him off.

“Imagine how it'll look if you don't turn up.”

Josh says nothing and Patrick perseveres. “I know it's going to be hard.”

“You expect me to walk in there like nothing happened?”

Patrick is confused. “But you'd bring Lucy, wouldn't you?”

I ponder this in the dark. Why on earth would it be hard for Joshua to attend his own brother's wedding?

“She's not my girlfriend. We work together.” Josh sounds irritated. I wish that didn't give me such a punch in the gut, but it does.

“You could have fooled me.”

“Yeah, well, she's more on the market for a nice guy. Aren't they all.”

There's a loaded silence. “How many more times do I have to say—”

“No more times.” Josh is the king of shutting down a conversation. There's more silence. I can almost hear them both looking at my bedroom door.

Patrick's voice is lowered now and I can't hear anything except huffy arguing. Hating myself desperately, I climb silently out of bed, careful to keep my feet in the shadows. I'm a disgusting little snoop.

“I'm asking you to come to my wedding and make your mother happy. Make
me
happy. Mindy is stressed as hell thinking there's some sort of family feud happening.”

Josh sighs, heavy and defeated. “Fine.”

“So, that's a yes?
Yes, please, Patrick, I'd love to come to your wedding? I accept your gracious invitation?
”

“Yes. That.”

“I'll mark you down with a plus one. If she survives the night.”

I grip the wall in horror until I hear Josh say sarcastically, “Ha-ha.”

I
T'S NOW SOME
time before dawn and my room is ice blue. I'm propped into a sitting position, gulping messily what I realize is lemonade. Did he go to the convenience store across the road? The sweet-sour taste of childhood nostalgia and homesickness makes me almost choke.

He takes the glass and eases me back down against the pillows with his arm behind my shoulders. His touch was uncertain yesterday, but now he smoothes his palms and fingertips across me with no hesitation. He looks wrecked with tiredness.

“Josh.”

His eyes flicker with surprise. “Lucy.”

“Lucinda,” I whisper archly. He turns away to smile, but I catch his sleeve.

“Don't. I've already seen it.” I'm never getting over his smile.

“Okay.” I can tell he's confused. He's not the only one. I've been staring at Joshua for so long, he's become a color spectrum unto himself. He's my days of the week. The squares on my calendar.

“White, off-white stripes, cream, non-gender-specific yellow, disgusting mustard, baby-blue, robin's-egg, dove-gray, navy, black.” I tick them off on my fingers.

Josh is alarmed. “You're still delirious.”

“Nope. Those are the shirt colors you have. Hugo Boss. Haven't you ever been to Target?”

“What the hell is the difference between white and off-white?”

“Ecru. Eggshell. They're different. There was one single time you surprised me.”

“And when was that?” He asks the question as indulgently as a babysitter. I kick my heel in temper against the mattress.

Why aren't I draped in a black negligee at least? I have never been this unattractive. I'm wearing
SLEEPYSAURUS
. I look down. I'm wearing a red tank top. Holy shit. He changed me.

“The elevator,” I blurt. I want to reroute this moment, back to a time I was halfway attractive. “You surprised me then.”

He looks at me carefully. “What did you think?”

“I thought you were trying to hurt me.”

“Oh, great.” He sits back, embarrassed. “Clearly my technique is a little rusty.”

I snatch his sleeve with superhuman strength and sit up a little. “But then I realized what you were doing. Kissing. Of course. I haven't kissed in ages.”

He frowns. “Oh, really.” He stares down at me.

I elaborate so forcefully my voice shakes. “It was
hot
.”

“I never heard from HR or the cops, so . . .” He trails off, looking at my lips. I'm twisting my hands into his T-shirt. It stretches around my fists. It's so soft, I want to wrap my entire body in it.