Page 2 of Mostly Loathing You

“Atlanta?” The question gets asked, and a few seconds go by before I realize it’s my own voice. I’d asked the question.

“What? Your ego too big to not suffocate me by being in the same city as you?”

“More like the stench of you might evacuate the metropolitan area…”

This gets the reaction I’ve been chasing all night, pulling ascream from Hannah’s lungs as she jumps from the table. Her face is about as red as a cherry Popsicle and I grin in response.

“You’re a dick!” Hannah stomps into the house, dramatic as ever.

I don’t really care if she’s in Atlanta, as long as she stays the hell away from me.

TWO

THREE WEEKS LATER

HANNAH

As much as I love my brother and Gen—and I do, I love them tremendously—I am so happy to no longer be staying with them. If I have to wear earplugs to bed one more time, I might actually self-destruct. Genuinely, I think the sound of my brother having sex is seared into my brain, and it’s a trauma I cannot undo.

I’ve avoided eye contact for a week and a half.

Not to mention being around two people so disgustingly in love when you’re terminally single is just plain sad.

My older brother and my best friend since kindergarten reignited their relationship last year after mutual friends set them up on a trip to Saint-Tropez. At first I was thrown by it, but honestly, seeing them together feels right. When they broke up in high school, I didn’t handle it well, so having Gen back in my life has been a welcome change.

I just wish we weren’t still tiptoeing around the past because neither of us wants to bring it up and talk about it.

“Are you planning on helping?” Jackson huffs, dropping a brown box markedKitchenonto the low-pile carpet. He pushes his dark brown hair back, the combination of the sweltering Atlanta heat and the walking up and down two flights of stairs causing sweat to soak his skin.

“But you do it so well…” I pout.

“Hannah—”

“Fine.” I put my can of Diet Coke on the credenza, following Jackson out of the apartment I will be inhabiting for the next year.

Thankfully, when I’d decided to move to Atlanta, Wes, Jackson’s best friend, said his sister’s roommate was moving out and that she needed a new one. At first I was nervous, but once I learned that it was because she was moving in with her boyfriend and not because Sage was a raging psycho, I agreed.

Sage Buckley meets us right outside the building, her beautiful, highlighted curls pushed into a ponytail on top of her head. Her golden-brown skin looks almost ethereal peppered with a dusting of sweat. Her hands are on her hips as she sucks in air, evaluating the U-Haul still half-full of my belongings.

“How do you have so much shit?” she laughs, nodding her head toward the heap.

“It’s not shit, it’smemories.”

Truth be told, I didn’t need to bring every memento from every production I’d ever been in when I moved to New York. I considered them reminders of why I worked so hard, and when I opted to move to Atlanta, I couldn’t find it in me to part ways with them.

Especially my wig fromLittle Shop of Horrors. The very wig that fell off my head as they fed me to the man-eating plant, Audrey II. I was cast as Audrey Fulquard, the female lead in the production. Even though I’m naturally blonde, I refused to cut it, so I opted to wear a platinum blonde bobwig. While the show was one of the most fun I’d ever done, I can still feel my cheeks flush in embarrassment when I remember the crowd laughing as the wig hit the wood of the community theater stage despite it being the saddest scene in the show.

I’ve been in over thirty productions since middle school between school and community shows, yet despite my love of the arts, I’ve yet to be cast in a professional production.

Getting your union card in New York is harder than I expected. I considered going to Chicago, but ultimately I felt like I was going to run into the same problem.

Homesick.

Atlanta isn’t Live Oak,thank God, but Jackson lives here and it’s one of the most up-and-coming theater districts in the nation.

Heaving the box up to cradle it in my arms, I move back toward the building, hoping we’ll finish sooner rather than later. Gen, Sage, and Jackson each grab a box as well, following me in a much-less-fun version of Follow the Leader.

Sweat pools at my brow as I make my seventh non-stop trip from the truck to my new apartment. As Jackson drops the last box onto the living room floor, I throw myself onto the couch, my eyelids fluttering shut as my head meets the headrest.

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