Page 88 of Hate Wrecked

His fair skin is luminescent in the sun—his shoulders red. He’s not as pale as he once was, but he will never get a tan. He’s burned a few times while we’ve been on the island. “I know,” he says. “Thank you.”

We walk in the water like silent soldiers. The ocean is our enemy, the island our home. The unsaid words between us, a friend we can’t break free from.

THEN

RILEY

I leftthe scene like it was a crime—a hit-and-run. Rowan left on the side of the road with no way home.

Barry yanked his hand from mine when we got into the house. “Glenne, what the fuck? What was that?”

I wasn’t who I am now back then. I was a shell of a person, wrapped up in the same thing my mother was. “I’m sorry,” I said, instead offuck you, you were trying to cause a scene and put me in my place.

But I was always letting him put me in my place. A place beneath him, waiting by the phone, hoping he would call. Waiting for him to stop fucking models and actresses more well-known than me, well-known in their own right. Not the mirror image of their parents. Actresses who had something to prove so he could steer them in the right direction.

When my mother tried to pull me aside, I grabbed Barry’s hand, and walked back out the door to the pool.

“This is why I can never take you seriously,” Barry said over the music “You’re always mad at me, but what about my feelings? You’re always gallivanting off to your dad’s or to wherever when I need someone who will be serious with me.” I looked around to see who was witnessing the scene, wondering who he had fucked, who was waiting for this to explode so they could have him all to themselves again.

The anger that rolled through me then was red and wild. And I turned to him to yell, to tell him to get the fuck out of my house. But I knew that would never happen. I could end it, but he would still be Asa’s friend. He would still be there all the time. And if he wasn’t with me, he would be with someone else. Not just messing around and slinking off, he would bring someone there to make my life hell. And Asa and my mother would let it happen. They would tell me to move on, to ignore it. Just as they ignored everything about me and my sisters.

“I want to be serious with you,” I muttered, half believing it, making a choice.

“Being serious doesn’t mean fucking around with the bodyguard, Glenne.” I saw faces turn toward us, and I burned red. “It’s beneath you. But, honestly, I’ve seen it coming for a while.”

I didn’t believe him. He saw nothing but himself, never wanted anyone to think he wasn’t ahead of them at all times.

“I haven’t fucked him,” I said, clenching my fists. But God, I wanted to. I wanted Rowan more than anything in the world; I wanted to feel him beneath me, inside of me, surrounding me. But I kept him at arm’s length. Testing the waters and testing us. Learning everything with him. Keeping myself from him in a way. I was poison. My family was poison. He was an anchor. I had to let him sink. It was better than floating with me.

I stalked through the garden again, retracing my earlier path. Barry was hot on my heels.“Whathaveyou done with him?”

And I decided then, as I reached the sand, that it was enough. He didn’t know my heart. He didn’t know my soul. He wanted to use me. And I would use him in return. I turned to him, and I acted. I put on a show. I pretended to be her, my mother. All I needed to do was bury who I was deep inside. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Do you think I would stoop that low? Look who my parents are. He’s just a friend, and I liked talking to him, so thanks for taking that away from me.”

Barry shook his head and walked toward me. He enveloped me in a superficial hug for show, but I accepted it anyway. I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my face against his chest. “You know you can always talk to me, Glenne. Whether we are together or not, I want what’s best for you.”

Paper-thin words, lifeless like the lines he delivered on television, but when attached to a face like his, they were treated as gospel.

I never knew where he was. Tracking him down at hotels and sets was exhausting—almost as exhausting as waiting by my phone in my room, waiting for him to call. The moment I left the house, he suddenly left a message on our answering machine—like he had a sixth sense of when I was not around.

Convenient. Planned. Methodical.

I didn’t see it then as a young girl, tripping all over herself for someone she thought would be a star. He wouldn’t. He would be known for preying on young girls, waiting for actresses and singers to turn eighteen so he could make his move. Predator.

I was the prey, and I liked it. I convinced myself I liked it.

Or maybe that I deserved it.

I saw it then, the tissue paper in the sand. The tiny precious thing meant for me.

“Glenne, I think I could love you sometimes, but I need you to be a big girl for me. Can you do that?”

I knew where it was leading then, where it had been leading for ages. I held my virginity like a prize, guarded it like a jewel. It wasn’t, but my mind and what I had been taught told me I could make Barry love me if I made myself unlike the other girls. The girls he fucked.

“How?”

“You never fucked that bodyguard? You promise me that?”’

I shook my head, burying my face further into his chest, looking away from the gift Rowan had left for me. The wind rustled it, unwrapping the gift in cruelty. It was so small I almost didn’t see it— the gold glinting. “No. I haven’t.” A truth buried in a lie.

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