The Hating Game: A Novel

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.”

MY 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.”

IT’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.

“Is my bed everything you imagined?”

“I wasn’t expecting so many books. And it’s a little bigger than I pictured.”

“What about my apartment?”

“It’s a tiny little pigsty.” He’s not being mean about it. It’s true.

“Do you think Mr. Bexley and Helene make out in the elevator?” As long as he keeps answering my questions, I’ll keep asking them.

“Guaranteed. I’m sure they have vicious hate-sex after each quarterly review.” His eyes are tipping into black and he unravels his T-shirt from my hands as I catch a glimpse of half an inch of stomach—hard and hair. Now I’m sweating more.

“I bet when you shower, water pools right up . . . here.” I put my finger into his collarbone. “I’m thirsty. I’ll dehydrate.” He lets out a breath and it blows right through me.

“Let’s be just like them when we grow up, Josh. We could start a new game. Imagine. We could play games forever.”

“Let’s talk about it when you’re not crazy with fever.”

“Yeah, right. When I’m not sick you’ll hate me again, but for now we’re good.” I take his hand and put it on my forehead to hide my sudden despair.

“I won’t,” he tells me. He smoothes his hand away, over my hair.

“You hate me so much, and I can’t take it much longer.” I’m pathetic. I hear it in my voice.

“Shortcake.”

“Stop calling me Shortcake.” I try to roll onto my side but he presses the heels of his palms lightly against my shoulders. I stop breathing.

“Watching you pretend to hate that nickname is the best part of my day.”

When I don’t reply, he almost smiles and releases me. “It’s time to tell me about the strawberry farm.”

It’s a sore point—and it’s also not the first time he’s asked. I might be about to give him fodder to tease me with for a long time.

“Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to know. Tell me everything about strawberries.” His soft, cajoling whisper will be the death of me.

In my mind I’m almost back there, under the big canvas umbrella with the torn corner, talking to tourists while their kids run on ahead, buckets clanking. The alien hum of cicadas fill the air. There’s never silence.

“Well. Alpines are also called ‘Mignonette,’ and they grow wild in France on the hillsides and they’re as big as your thumbnail. They have amazing flavor intensity for their size.”

“Tell me another.”

I open my eyes to slits. “Strawberries are not a joke. I’ve gotten shit from almost everyone I’ve ever met about it.”

“It’s such a cute thing about you.”

The word cute lights up like neon in my dim bedroom and I’m so rattled I begin babbling.

“Fine. Okay, Earliglows. They grow so quickly. One day you’re walking along at sunset next to nothing but green . . . the next morning they’re all there. Little red buds, getting brighter. By dinnertime they’re done, like red Christmas lights.”

When Josh sighs, his eyes close for a second. He’s exhausted. “Which are your favorites?”

“Red Gauntlets. They were in the rows closest to the kitchen and I was too lazy to go much farther. I had a big pink smoothie every morning.”

He sits in silence, and his eyes are definitely not the man I know. They’re wistful, lonely, and so beautiful I have to close mine.

“I swear, I can still feel the seeds between my teeth. Chandlers are my dad’s favorite. He says he paid for my college tuition with them.”

“What’s your dad like? He’s Nigel, right?”

“You and that blog. He worked so hard to send me to school. I can’t begin to tell you. He cried on the back porch the day I left for college. He said . . .”

I trail off. The squeeze in my throat makes it impossible to go on.

“What did he say?”

I sidestep. “I haven’t thought about this for so long. I haven’t been home in eighteen months now. I missed Christmas, because Helene went back to France to see her family, and I wanted to cover for her.”

“I didn’t go home either.”

“Oh, yeah. My parents mailed me a big care package, and I ate shortbread and opened presents on the floor of my living room watching infomercials. What did you do?”

“Pretty much the same. What did he say to you, then? Your dad, on the back porch?” He’s a dog with a bone.

I can’t relay that entire conversation; I’ll start crying. I might never stop. My dad, his elbows on knees, the tears making clean lines down his tanned, dusty face. I abbreviate the conversation into a sanitized nutshell.

“That his loss was the world’s gain. And my mom, she couldn’t stop bragging, telling everyone about her daughter going off to college . . . She’s making a new variety of strawberry, and they’re all called Lucies.”

“According to the blog, Lucy Twelve was quite good. Tell me more.”

“I don’t understand your fascination with that blog. Mom was a newspaper writer, but she had to give it all up.”

“For what?”

“For my dad. She was doing a piece on the effects of some heavy rain on agriculture, so she went out to a local orchard. She found my dad in a tree. His dream was to own a strawberry farm, and he couldn’t do it alone.”

“Do you think she made the wrong decision?”

“Dad always says, She picked me. Like an apple, right out of the tree. I love them, but I think it’s a sad story sometimes.”

“You could ask her sometime. She probably doesn’t regret a thing. They’re still together, and it means you’re here.”

“Dad calls you other names starting with J, but never your real name.”

“What?” He looks alarmed. “You’ve told your dad about me?”

“He’s mad at you for being so mean. Julian and Jasper and John. One time, he called you Jebediah and I nearly peed myself. You’d have to grovel to my dad, that’s for sure.”

Josh looks so disturbed I decide to cut him a break and change the subject.

“When I’m homesick I can smell warm strawberries. Which is pretty much all the time.” I watch him scrambling to try to unscramble these nonsensical statements.

“Did you play out there in the fields? When you were a kid?”

“You’ve seen the blog picture. It’s pretty clear I did.” I turn my face away. Me, knees stained pink from berry juice, tangled mane of hair, eyes bluer than the sky. Wild little farm girl.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” He gently puts his fingertips on my jaw and turns me back. “You in your little overall shorts. You look like you’ve been outside for days. All dirty and wild. Your smile hasn’t changed.”

“You never see my smile.”

“I bet you had a tree house.”

“I did, actually. I practically lived up there.”

His eyes are bright with an expression I’ve never seen. I close my eyes for a second to rest them. He checks my temperature and when his hand lifts away from my forehead I complain. He touches my hand.

“I’ve never thought where you come from is inferior.”

“Oh, sure. Ha-ha. Strawberry Shortcake.”

“I think where you came from—Sky Diamond Strawberries—is the best place I can imagine. I’ve always wanted to go there. I’ve Google mapped directions. I’ve even looked up the flight and hire car.”

“Do you like strawberries?” I don’t know what else to say.

“I love strawberries. So much, you have no idea.” He sounds so kind that I feel a wave of emotion. I can’t open my eyes. He’ll see I have tears in them.

“Well, it’s out there, waiting for you. Pay the lady under the umbrella and take a bucket. Mention me for a discount, but you’ll get an interrogation on how I’m doing. How I’m really doing. If I’m lonely, if I’m eating properly. Why I won’t take the time to come home.”

I think of the job applications, side by side in a beige folder. A wave of exhaustion and dizziness hits me. I want to be asleep, that lovely dark place where these anxieties and sadness can’t follow me. I start to feel like I’m slowly spinning.

“What should I tell her?”

“I’m so scared. It’s all going to end soon, one way or another. I’m hanging on by my fingernails. I have no idea if their investment in me will ever pay off. And I’m so lonely sometimes I could cry. I lost my best friend. I spend all my time with a huge frightening man who wants to kill me, and he’s probably my only friend now, even though he doesn’t want to be. And it breaks my heart.”

His mouth presses on my cheek. A kiss. A miracle. Josh’s warm breath, fanning my cheek. His fingertips slide into my palms, and my fingers curl into his.

“Shortcake. No.”

I’m twirling through endless loops, and I tighten my grip on his hands.

“I’m so dizzy . . .” I am, but I also need this conversation to end.

“I need to ask you something.” Sometime later, his voice cuts through the hazy darkness.

“It’s not fair to ask now, but I will. If I could think of a way to get us out of this mess, would you want me to do it?”

I’m still holding on to him like he’s the only thing stopping me from falling off the planet. “Like how?”

“However I could. Would you want me to?” If he would be my friend for the days left, it would be enough. It would be wonderful enough to burn away the negativity.

That smile would be enough.

“This is the part of the dream where you smile, Josh.”

He sighs, frustrated. He holds me still, and as I orbit away into sleep, I whisper it through the fog of sleep.

“Of course I would.”