Page 5 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
Before Don sends me on my merry way, he hands me a bag of ice packs, anti-inflammatory medication, a brace, and somehandy-dandy crutches that make me look forty years older than I actually am.
When I hobble my way out of Don’s office—navigating on my crutches like a newborn baby deer—Fulton’s waiting for me by his car, pretending to look around nonchalantly. Then he spots me, composes himself, and would look fairly calm if it wasn’t for the nervous twitch in his right eye.
Fulton and I are different in a lot of ways, but it’s what makes our friendship work. He’s the anxious wreck of a human being who faints at the sight of blood; I’m the unfazed one who probably wouldn’t give a shit if I was bleeding out from a major stab wound. When shit happens to me, I know there’s nothing I can really do to change it. So I just accept it and move on instead of worrying about what I can’t control.
I wasn’t always like that, though. One too many failures made me that way, and I’m not just talking about a missed goal.
Fulton, on the other hand, spends every waking second worrying about something. I’m pretty sure he has a perpetually high heart rate like one of those ancient chihuahuas that live for twenty years. I teach him how to chill out, and he teaches me to…be more empathetic, I guess. Fulton loves people. He never gets tired of them. I don’t love people. I hate most people. There are about eight people that I tolerate, and the rest of the world could go up in a blazing ball of fire for all I care.
I’m extroverted when I need to be, but that’s only reserved for party environments. If booze, babes, or bad decisions are involved, I’m pretty much there. But I guess I’ll have to table that side of me too for a while. The only B I’m going to be getting is back aches.
Fulton fidgets with his hands, and then a bunch of words catapult from his mouth and steamroll over me. “How bad is it? Will you be able to play again?”
“In three months, sure.”
His face is crestfallen. “Shit. I’m sorry, dude.”
I brush him off with what I’m hoping is a convincing enough shrug. “Nothing I can do now except hope it goes by quickly.”
He nods and opens the passenger door for me, helping me into his car before throwing my crutches in the back seat. Fulton, despite making millions of dollars a year, still drives his beat-up Toyota Tercel, claiming it has sentimental value and refusing to fix the window crank because it’ll “erase its character.” I swear the side door almost flew off its hinges when we were on the highway the other day.
He sticks the key in the ignition but doesn’t rev it, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel in a rhythmless drum. “Is there anything you can do to speed up the healing process?”
“Dance classes” is all I reveal, huffing out of my nostrils.
“You’re going to take dance classes?” he exclaims.
“If I want to strengthen my flexibility, then I’ll have to.”
A smile sweeps over Fulton’s lips like the first break of dawn over a never-ending night. “But you can’t dance,” he teases.
I brace my hand over my heart offendedly. “Oh, yeah? What do you call me memorizing every move to the Rasputin dance when Beer Comes Trouble was having karaoke that one night?”
“I call that deeply troubling and a result of way too much alcohol.”
“First off, rude.” I make a show of counting on my fingers. “And second off, just because I’m crippled doesn’t mean I won’t beat you with my crutches.”
Fulton finally gets the car sputtering to life, and he looks over his shoulder as he begins backing out of his makeshift parking spot. “Still violent, I see.”
“Still annoying, I see.”
“At least I can walk.”
“At least I don’t throw up every time I talk to a girl.”
He side-eyes me, pursing his lower lip out. “Touché.”
We exit the parking lot and turn onto the main road, and I have to keep my knees from smacking into the glove compartment every time we go over a bump. Which is a lot more difficult when my hip has the mobility of a fossilized statue.
The outlines of vegetation and concrete buildings glide past the window, bathed in a post-afternoon haze, and shades of pomegranate pink hover on the horizon, waiting to be rolled out over shingled roofs and abandoned streets.
“Speaking of girls, whatever happened with that chick from the rink?” Fulton asks, waggling his eyebrows.
Suddenly, I get this surge of automatic hatred in my gut, and the thought of her is like a butane-covered match to a sky-high flame. I loathe that girl. More than humanly possible. Just thinking about the way she car-fucked poor old Natasha—my Jaguar I-Pace—drives me so fucking crazy that a court wouldn’t deem me mentally competent enough to stand trial. Hell, I don’t even know her name, but I’m determined to hold a lifelong grudge against her until the day I wither away in my casket.
I play dumb because the alternative is getting the rage sweats. “What girl?”
“The girl you were having a huge yelling match with?”
