The Hating Game

He sits on the edge of the couch, his hair damp and ruffled in every direction. I turn the page and unfortunately a lurid diagram of an erect penis glares up at me.
“I am trying to be a bit more normal.”
He looks at the page. “How’s it working out so far?”
“I’m glad this isn’t a pop-up book.”
He huffs in amusement. I follow him to the kitchen and watch him cut vegetables into ridiculously neat little sticks.
“Omelet okay?”
I nod and glance at his whiteboard. Tuesday: OMELET. I look at what’s for dinner for the rest of the week. I wonder how I can score an invitation back.
“Can I do anything?”
He shakes his head and I watch him crack six eggs into a metal bowl.
“So, how was work? You clearly missed me.”
I put my hands on my face in embarrassment and he just laughs a bit to himself.
“It was boring.” It’s the truth.
“No one to antagonize, huh?”
“I tried abusing some of the gentle folk in payroll but they got all teary.”
“The trick is to find that one person who can give it back as good as they can take it.” He takes out a pan and begins to fry the vegetables in a single, stingy drop of oil.
“Sonja Rutherford, probably. That scary lady in the mailroom that looks like an albino Morticia Addams.”
“Don’t line my replacement up too quick. You’ll hurt my feelings.”
The reminder of the likely outcome of this entire scenario makes me decide to lean against him. The middle of his back is the most perfectly ergonomic place to hide my face.
When it all comes to an end, I’m going to remember this.
“You gotta tell me why you’re here.”
“I got a bit . . . sad today, thinking about everything changing?”
“Doctor Josh diagnoses you with Stockholm syndrome.”
“I know, right.” I snuggle my cheek into the muscle.
“Maybe you fear change, rather than the prospect of sitting alone in there.”
I appreciate he hasn’t automatically said I’d be out job hunting.
“I kept thinking about your blue bedroom. I feel like this is something we need to discuss. Before time runs out.”
I hear the deep sizzle of the egg being added to the vegetables. He covers the pan and turns.
“You’re the sort of person who needs to be eased into things slowly.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he silences me.
“I know you, Luce, and you do. Your freak-outs are pretty impressive. Imagine we have sex right now. Right here, on the counter.” He slaps his hand down firmly on it.
“You’d be so awkward afterward, you’d never speak to me again. You’d quit ahead of the interviews and go and live in the forest.”
“Why would you care? I’d like to live in a forest.”
“I need you to compete with me. And maybe we can find a scenario that doesn’t involve running out of time.” He sighs and checks the omelet. “Do you have one-night stands? Like, do you go to clubs and pick out some hot guy and take him home with you?”
Even as he asks the question, his face grimaces. Maybe I’m not the only one who can imagine faceless suitors.
“Of course not. Unless you count. And I can’t even get one night.”
He lightly rubs his palm across my shoulders, as kindly as a friend, and all the wiring holding my muscles together gets an inch looser. I step closer and lean all my weight against him. When I press my cheek on his chest, his heat glows against me.
“I’m trying to make sure that when we do, you don’t have any regrets.”
“I doubt I would.”
“I’m flattered.” He peeks in at the omelet. “Go back to the couch, put the TV on.”
I drop myself into the plush perfection of his couch. I’m going to transform my igloo into a safe, warm little stronghold too. I need lamps, rugs, more shelves, and a painting of Tuscany. I need buckets of paint and a pale blue bedroom. White linen and a fern.
“Where’d you get this couch? I want to get the same one.”
“It’s the only one on earth.” His dry voice floats out from the kitchen.
“Can I buy it from you?”
“No.”
“What about this ribbon cushion?”
“One of a kind.”
“I think I see your strategy.” I watch TV for a bit and Josh hands me a plate and a fork.
“I’m like a little duchess when I’m here. You don’t have to wait on me.” I kick my shoes off under his coffee table.
“Some horrible monsters secretly enjoy spoiling little duchesses. Should we aim for a two-hour cease-fire? Starting now?”
“Sure, let’s do it. Yum, this looks good.” I can smell fresh basil. How is he still single?
We watch the news and he takes my empty plate. Then he gives me a bowl of vanilla ice cream. He doesn’t have one for himself.
“Why even bother keeping any in your freezer?”
“In case I have unexpected sweet-tooth visitors.”
I can’t help but grin at the thought. “It wouldn’t destroy those abs to have one little spoonful. It’s protein, right?”
He looks at the bowl, and sighs. He takes my spoon from me and steals a huge mouthful. “Oh, lord.” His eyelids flutter.
“You should treat yourself to something small each night. No point in being cruel to yourself.”
“Something small, huh?” He looks at me pointedly. “Okay.”
I take another mouthful of ice cream. The spoon slides against my tongue and the intimacy of it is obscene. His tongue, my tongue. I lick it and he watches me, chest expanding, breath leaving him in a rush.
He unfolds a fluffy gray blanket over me and I lie there like a spoiled child. He sits at the far end, near my feet, and I stare at his side profile as he leans forward on the edge of the couch and picks up the medical text book.
“You look sad.”
“I’m . . . happy.” His expression changes to faint surprise. “Weird.”
“Why do you still have those textbooks? This one has so many dicks in it.”
“I was originally going to go into the family trade. I haven’t managed to part with them, I guess. And a lot of them are my mother’s. They’re pretty old, but she wanted me to have them.”
He flips to the flyleaf and traces his finger across her handwritten name. I want to ask about his parents, but if I know Josh, he’s on the verge of shutting down.
“Doctor Josh, MD. You would have been a sexy doctor.”
“Oh, definitely.” He discards the book and clicks around with the remote.
“All your lady patients would have had pounding heart rates.”
He takes my empty bowl. He kisses the little hinge of my jaw until I gasp, and then finds the pulse point in my wrist expertly.
“Let’s see. Think about me in a white coat, sliding a stethoscope into the neck of your blouse.”
I can almost feel the freezing cold disc pressed against me. I shiver and I feel my nipples begin to pinch.
“You’re giving me a brand-new kink.” I say it like a smartass, but he smiles.
“I could probably work with that.”
My mind leaps to what our theoretical sex life would be like. We’re playing games with each other all day; it stands to reason they’d carry on in bed. The image hits me so powerfully I feel my body squeeze, empty and wanting.
His voice against the back of my ear as we stand in the doorway to his beautiful bedroom.
What shall we play now?
“I’d pretend to be sick every single night.”
“Every night?” He’s still checking my pulse, staring at his watch, his lips moving as he counts. It’s so sexy I know it beats faster. Eventually, he releases me.
“Quite a pounding little heart you got there. And a raging case of Horny-Eye. I think it’s quite serious.”
“Will I die?”
“I prescribe complete couch-rest under my supervision. But it’s touch and go.”
“I’d make a sleazy joke about your bedside manner but it would be a little redundant at this point.” I snuggle back down under my blanket.
“Can you even imagine my bedside manner? I’d be the worst. I’d scare people into health.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to be a doctor? Because you hate people?”
“It didn’t work out.” His voice gets hard.
“Was there anything you enjoyed about it?”
“I enjoyed most of it. I was good at the theory component. I’ve got a good memory. And I don’t hate all people. Just . . . most people.”
“What about the practical component? Did you have a bad experience? Did they make you put your finger up someone’s butt?”
He laughs even as his nose wrinkles in distaste. “You don’t start on live people. And you don’t start on butts. What kind of mind thinks of that?”
“Cadavers! I bet you saw cadavers. What was it like?” I think of all the autopsy scenes in Law & Order.
“This one time, my dad . . .” He hesitates, looking away, considering.
I don’t push him, and after a long silence he continues.
“My dad, in his wisdom, decided to set me up on a bit of informal work experience at his hospital, in the break before I started college. Some of it was okay. Mainly I was passed around by a few doctors who all seemed too exhausted to say no to him. But one afternoon he slaps me on the back, introduces one of the coroners, and leaves us to it.”
I am starting to feel terrible. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s hard.”
“No, it’s okay. I guess it was the ultimate baptism of fire. I made it through about five minutes before I threw up. The smell of dead person, and chemicals, it left a taste in my mouth. Probably why I started eating all these mints. Sometimes I can’t get the smell out of my nose and it’s been years.”
He lifts my arm and presses my wrist to his nose.
“Your skin smells like candy. Up until that point, it was a given I’d study medicine. My great-great-grandfather was a doctor and it’s always been the Templeman chosen vocation. But after seeing someone’s rib cage get jacked open, it was the beginning of the end.”
“You managed to stay for the rest of the autopsy?”
“I managed to stay for another year. And then I quit.” He looks distressed by the memory and defaults to defensiveness. “So you came over to grill me on my life choices?”
I catch his fingertips and hold his hand between mine.
“I didn’t want to be anywhere else tonight. I was crawling out of my skin.”
I’m proud I had the courage to say it.
He turns back to me and the expression in his eyes is softer.
“My leg was jiggling like this.” I demonstrate and he grins. “You should have seen me driving here. I was laughing like I’d broken out of prison. I was completely deranged.”
“Do you think you’ve finally cracked your sanity?”
“For sure. The weird need to stare at your pretty face completely overwhelmed me. I had the energy of twenty atom bombs.”
“Why do you think I go to the gym so much?”
A big bubble of happiness fills me. I struggle upright and lean against him, my head falling easily into the perfect cradle of his neck. It’s true; he fits me everywhere.
“You never have to explain your choices. Not to me, not to anyone.”
He nods slowly, and I cover him in the blanket too.
I could never have imagined one day I’d be sitting on a couch, my mouth tasting like vanilla, with my head on Joshua Templeman’s shoulder. It’s going to end in disaster. I close my eyes and breathe.
“I want to know why you were so sad today, Shortcake.” It’s uncanny how he senses shifts in my mood.
“I just was. I was thinking about everything at stake for me.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t. You’re my nemesis.”
“You’re awfully snuggly with your nemesis.” It’s true. I’m snuggling.