Page 89 of Hate Me Like You Mean It
I bolted for the door, already fisting the handle when he said, “Alice.”
It was the soft, even tone of it that made me pause and look back at him.
“It’s his turn,” he said.
My fingers loosened on the handle. “But I…”
“You can chase after him if you’d like. I won’t stop you.” He stacked both hands on top of his cane, eyes softening with affection. “But before you do, just know, my dear girl, that you are… you are worth so much more than he’s given you these last few years.”
My nose stung at that, a watery blur seeping over my vision.
“It’s his turn,” he repeated softly. Then, sucking in a big, refreshing lungful of air, his shoulders perked up. “That earlier talk about going to a spa has my muscles craving a deep tissue. See if Ria and Jamie can ditch work a little early. Been a while since our last girls’ day.”
I sniffled, my fist rolling over the door handle. “Tell me what’s in the box first.”
To his credit, he told me the truth.
I just chose not to believe it.
29
Dominic
I knew better than to open the box.
I did it anyway.
It was the impatience that did me in. The type of gut-churning restlessness that trails an unfinished conversation with your sworn nemesis—the unrequited love of your life who, with a single sentence, had managed to decimate your entire world.
“I just didn’t want to love you anymore.”
My pulse scattered, my chest blazing with emotions I wasn’t allowed to feel.
She could have been lying.
Or not.
My tongue slashed over my top teeth as I finally caved, ceasing my pacing across the kitchen so I could rip the cardboard open.
For someone so unwilling to throw out other people’s trash, Robert had surprisingly few reservations about digging through garbage bins. My rib cage hammered as I retrieved the crumpled ball of paper crowning the assorted pile of junk. Peeled it open.
The stains were still there. From when the clown had wiped his fake tears with it.
Funny, no?
I didn’t quite get the joke until Alice spilled a couple of beans I didn’t realize had been missing from my neat little stack but maybe I’d be able to appreciate it once I figured out what the fuck was going on.
I tossed the letter into the garbage before reaching back into the box.
A deflated soccer ball (tossed). Faded baseball cap (tossed). Gaming headset with a broken mic (tossed).
A crinkled program for a school play.
My eyes gravitated to her right away, like a moth to a flame. She was beaming at the camera, long hair cascading down the side of her bright velvet Renaissance gown as she squeezed the life out of one of her castmates, a mousy brunette whose name I couldn’t recall.
My mouth twitched.
Alice’s rendition of Juliet was one of the funniest end products to come out of our old dare streak. Due in no small part to the fact that she’d found me in the audience straightaway and had no apparent qualms about pausing in the middle of her lines and declarations of eternal love to glare daggers at me anytime she heard a peep, even if I wasn’t the one responsible for making it.
