Page 12 of I Love to Hate You
“Don’t call me sensitive. I’mnotsensitive. You just annoy me.”
“Who gives a fuck? We don’t have time for this.”
“Well, then stop being a bitch.”
“What …” Kendrick starts, but the rest of his words get caught in his throat and he has to clear it to speak again. “Did you just call me a bitch?”
“Well, you’re acting like one,” I double down. “But I’ll be the bigger person and get over it, because the one correct thing you’ve said is that we don’t have time for this. Now, I have this idea about a social media platform made only for families to connect.”
Kendrick presses his lips together, shaking his head as he looks up at the ceiling, lost in thought.
“Stop gazing up at the lights and let’s do this so I can be rid of you,” I command.
“Goddamn it,” he replies, and I can tell I’m pushing his buttons. “We’re going to come back to the fact that you just called me a bitch, but fine. Tell me about your dumb ass social media idea.”
“Fuck you, it’s not dumb. It’s just a place where families can sign up, but only with people they’re related to, like a big family tree.”
“What are you, a kleptomaniac?” he says indignantly.
“What?”
“First you steal movie lines, and now you’re trying to steal Facebook’s entire model. Have you no shame?”
“It’s not like Facebook,” I argue, although I know it’s a little like Facebook. “There are no friends allowed. Like … you can only link with someone if you identify as a family member—an aunt, or a cousin, or something. Don’t look at me like that. Do you have a better idea?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean yours doesn’t suck.”
“God, I can’t believe I had the misfortune of being paired up with you.”
“The feeling is fucking mutual. Now come up with something else.”
“What the hell?” I bark, drawing the attention of a nearby group. “Youcome up with something else. All you’re doing is standing there critiquing my ideas. Let’s hear one of yours.”
“No. You’re ideas, I’m pretty. You said it yourself.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“I hate you and everything you say.”
“Well, like you just stated, the feeling is fucking mutual,” I snap, before the sound of Dan clearing his throat finally cuts us off.
“All right, everybody, if I could have your attention,” he says, standing up from behind the desk. “I hope you’ve all used your time wisely, because it’s time to pitch. Everyone take your seats for now, and I’ll call up one group at a time to sell me on their idea. Let’s do this.”
Kendrick and I look at each other as the realization swirls through us. We wasted every second of our time arguing, and now we’re about to look like complete idiots in front of everyone. Perfect.
Ten
~ MAYA~
How did I get myself into this? Oh, I know how—fucking Dan the marketing guy teamed me up with the biggest asshole in the world. Now the two of us are sitting next to each other, scowling as my boyfriend’s group gets up and begins their pitch in front of everybody.
I’d only heard rumors about Kendrick Kennedy before the day I saw him fighting in the cafeteria. His name was as legendary as it was infamous. On one hand, he was the tall, menacing man who walked through the halls and metaphorically pushed all the boys against their lockers. The guys were all afraid of him, and his name was reminiscent of Voldemort. They dared not speak of him too loud without glancing over their shoulders in the hall. He has been their boogeyman for four years—the clear alpha who ran the pack without trying. To me, he was a vicious ghost who’d haunted plenty of the people I knew, but I’d never seen him, so I didn’t believe the fairy tales. When I finally did lay my eyes on him, the other side of the legend began to make sense.
While the men were shaken by Kendrick’s name, the women of Temple U saw him completely differently. I heard stories of some mythical creature roaming school grounds like a unicorn, never going out of his way to be seen, but always standing out when he was. He was the bad boy who nobody’s boyfriend had the nerve to stand up to, and everybody’s girlfriend secretly crushed on.
I understood that the day I saw him. He is clearly gorgeous and obviously a violent menace, and my feet felt stuck in mud the day I saw him dragged out of the cafeteria. Now that he’s next to me, how he looks no longer matters, and I can only assume the women who fawned over him all this time never actually got the chance to talk to him. If they had, their opinions certainly would have changed. They say you should never meet your idols because they’re probably huge assholes in real life. Well, Kendrick isn't my idol but he fits that bill perfectly. He’s beautiful … and a dick.
I wonder if he has a … no, no, I’m not going there. Fuck him.
