Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel) Read online

  Stephanie yanked on my arms to try and pull me out of the can, but it was too deep. Stinky Parsons, the security guard at the plaza, came over and tilted the can on its side so I could crawl out as a small group of spectators gathered around.

  I snatched Stephanie’s sunglasses off her face and put them on as I blew past the people and we ran into the bookstore.

  Stephanie sat behind the counter of the bookstore and started up the computer. I put my head down on the counter and cried.

  “Could it really get any worse?” I said as I looked up at Stephanie.

  “That guy was fucking hot, Beth,” Stephanie said as she walked toward me and picked a piece of lettuce out of my hair and put it on the counter.

  “So gross,” I said and shook my head. “He was pretty hot. I felt like we shared some kind of...I don’t know, a moment.”

  Stephanie grabbed her phone out of her purse and pointed it at the counter.

  “Beth, pull a few strands of your hair toward the lettuce,” Stephanie said and giggled.

  I looked up at her and she snapped a picture of the lettuce.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Instagram! So much more popular than Facebook,” she said. “Just uploading. What should the caption say?”

  “I’m going to put on some music and remember why you’re my best friend,” I said as I walked into the backroom and loaded some music into Mr. Reece’s old 5-disc CD player.

  “Do not play anything maudlin!” Stephanie said as I came out of the backroom. “And you still have coffee grounds on your back. Change your shirt or something.”

  “No!” I said as the music came through the speakers in the front of the store. “This is who I am. And I chose the Pixies.”

  “I said no maudlin! Die Antwoord!”

  “Fuck you!” I said and hopped up on the counter as Stephanie played on the computer. “Did you get dumped yesterday? No. Did you fall into a garbage can in front of a hot guy? No. I’m picking the music and I pick the Pixies! And you’re lucky I didn’t pick Adele, but she may be coming.”

  “Great. When are you gonna start with the lesbo crunchy tunes? Let me know before you pick Alanis Morissette or The Indigo Girls so I can leave.”

  “No, that would be Mazie Goodnight, not me,” I said and looked at Stephanie. “You know she started a collective called Men Is Meat. Yeah, is. She said they’re demonstrating how--”

  “Huh,” Stephanie said as she stared at the computer. “Um...”

  “What?” I said and looked at her as her eyes got wide. “Tell me.”

  “Facebook...Billy sent me a friend request. I accepted and, well--”

  “No, impossible, Billy doesn’t have a Facebook page. We talked about it. He doesn’t like it.”

  “Yes, he does, Beth,” Stephanie said and shook her head.

  “Well, unfriend him! You can’t be friends with him. You’re my friend.”

  “O-okay,” she said and chewed on her fingernail as she stared at me. “It’s just that...”

  “Oh, God, what?”

  “Um, it says here he’s in a relationship, Beth.”

  “What?” I said and ran around the counter and pushed her off her stool.

  I scanned his page and saw everything...that he had nearly 500 friends, that we had many mutual friends and that he was in a relationship with Allysin “Alley Cat” Watson.

  “We need to stop looking,” Stephanie said.

  I shook my head as I stared at her.

  “How could I not know? I’m mean, I’m on Facebook! And how the fuck is he in a relationship? We just broke up!”

  “You believed him, Beth,” Stephanie said and turned off the computer’s monitor. “You weren’t looking for it because you believed him. And you’re not on Facebook that much compared to most.”

  I slammed my fists against my legs, grabbed a broom leaning against the counter and took out an entire Dean Koontz hardcover display.

  “Motherfucker!” I screamed as I beat the shit out of the Koontz books with the broom handle.

  “Oh, Beth,” Stephanie said and came over to me. “It’ll be alright.”

  “It will not! Billy is in a relationship with some chick named Alley Cat? Who is she?”

  “Can’t say,” Stephanie said. “Never saw her before. Stupid moniker though.”

  “You think? What did she look like? Am I prettier?”

  “I didn’t look. It’s not the time to look now, Beth. Even if she looked like Fiona from Shrek and you saw her right now, you’d think she looks like some Sports Illustrated swimsuit model compared to you.”

  “I’m Fiona from Shrek,” I said and dropped the broom and sat on the floor.

  “You are not, Beth,” Stephanie said as she sat down next to me.

  The doorbell rang as Stinky Parsons came into the store and stood over us.

  “You alright, Beth?” he said and pulled at the waistband of his polyester pants.

  “Um, yeah. Just going through some--”

  “Beth had a death,” Stephanie said and got up from the floor and stood next to Stinky. “Her family...grandmother. Very sudden. She’s not doing so well.”

  Stinky looked down at me and frowned.

  “I’m real sorry to hear that, Beth. Anything I can do to turn that frown upside down?”

  Stephanie looked at me and nodded.

  “Beer,” I said and pouted. “That’s the only thing that will turn this cold, gray day a little sunnier. Lots of beer.”

  Stinky Parsons bought us two cases of beer after Stephanie let him lick both sides of her neck twice.

  Oh, the party we had. We played loud music and danced through the store as we got absolutely wasted and ignored every customer who came in. We messed up a lot of people’s Black Friday. Mazie Goodnight would have been proud. My brain spun out on thoughts of Billy and “Alley Cat” and Stephanie took my phone away from me and refused me access to the computer.

  My phone rang and my heart jumped. Stephanie looked up from my phone.

  “It’s Rebel Love,” she said and answered. “Hey, Rebel, we’re at work wasted! What?”

  “What’s she saying? Man, I can barely stand, Steph. I don’t know that I can drink much more. Put her on speaker.”

  Stephanie turned on the speaker to my phone and went back to the computer. As her fingers flew over the keyboard, I got the spins.

  “Hello?” Rebel Love said.

  “Hey, you’re on speaker,” I said. “We got Stinky to get us some beer. I’m kinda drunk.”

  “Did Stephanie tell you?” she said.

  I squinted and tried to look at Stephanie as her face moved in and out of focus.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Well,” Rebel Love said, “I was doing the ads for the girls on Craigslist and I hopped on over to the Missed Connections, you know, where the people write and say...Saw you at the Walmart, you’re a hottie, get back at me with what I was wearing and we can meet, you know those, Beth?”

  “Uh huh,” I said and rested my head against the counter. “Is there a point?”

  “Well, then I see this ad this boy posted saying he met this gal this morning at the Truro Shopping Mall. Said this girl was beautiful and I just had this sense, got a feeling and I--”

  “You’re a Missed Connection, Beth!” Stephanie said and screamed.

  “I’m a what?” I said and lifted my head.

  “Hot skateboarder! He posted,” Stephanie said.

  “Oh, my God, Beth!” Rebel said into the phone and screamed. “You’re Garbage Girl?”

  “What?” I said and rubbed my face. “I don’t...read it, Steph!”

  “I’m trying to scroll through!” Stephanie said. “There are a lot of posts in response. Oh, here it is:

  “Hi, I’m Nicolas. We kind of met while I was skateboarding in Truro Shopping Mall. You are beautiful and we stared at each other. Then you fell in a garbage can. Just making sure you’re okay. Hit me up here if you want.”


  “O-M-G, Beth!” Rebel Love said. “Did he push you?”

  “His name is Nicolas,” I said and smiled. “Such a sweet name. What do I do?”

  “Already taken care of,” Stephanie said and smiled. “I made a post.”

  “I can’t believe you’re Garbage Girl!” Rebel Love said.

  “He did not call me that. He called me beautiful,” I said and smiled.

  “Well, he didn’t,” Stephanie said and frowned, “but way down the thread someone started it and it sort of caught on so, yeah, you’re Garbage Girl.”

  “That’s what people are calling me? Garbage Girl?”

  “They don’t know you, baby,” Rebel Love said. “Stephanie, how’d you respond?”

  “I just said: Hey, Nicolas! I’m fine! You’re hot. I work at The Bookworm and am here all the time and I’m Beth.”

  “Stephanie!” Rebel Love said. “You did not just tell everyone on Craigslist where she is, did you?”

  I looked down at the floor and shook my head.

  “It appears so,” I said. “Because my best friend is so wasted she didn’t bother to think. Jesus, Stephanie!”

  “You got an hour left for your shift,” Rebel Love said. “Do you want me to send Ivory-Lou down?”

  “No,” I said, “we’ll be fine. I’m sure once anyone sees Garbage Girl in the flesh, they’ll not want anything to do with her!”

  “Aw, honey, tomorrow’s another day,” Rebel Love said.

  And it certainly was.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Um, I guess I don’t know what to say,” Stephanie said as we stood in front of The Bookworm the next day.

  I removed my sunglasses and looked at the sentence spray-painted in big, shiny black letters across the storefront.

  “I think, I’ll hump ya in the dumpsta, Garbage Girl pretty much covers it,” I said as I read the graffiti.

  “Gosh, Beth,” Stephanie said and covered her eyes, “what should we do?”

  “I’ll just get some boxes out of the back and tape over this bullshit. You can go home. I appreciate the ride.”

  “Man, I’m sorry. If I hadn’t told everyone on Craigslist where we work...”

  “It doesn’t matter, Stephanie. We were both drunk,” I said and sighed. “I’ve got to take care of this. Call me later.”

  After I taped up the cardboard, I opened the store and cleaned up the beer cans and Dean Koontz books. I put in a Joy Division cd and sat in front of the computer and logged into Facebook. The back of my neck felt warm as I typed Billy’s name into the search.

  His profile picture, him looking hotter than hell, was a picture that Stephanie took of both of us. He cropped me out. His page was locked down tight. I stared at my phone and my palms started to sweat. I wiped my hands on my jeans and looked at the search box on Facebook. Then, I typed her name.

  Her page was public, of course. What did she have to hide?

  I went through all 298 of her profile pictures and by the time I clicked on the last one, I worked myself into a hell of a panic attack. She was blond and beautiful and tall and radiant.

  Every picture of her, every post she made, everything that was Allysin “Alley Cat” Watson seemed like it shot out of a unicorn’s ass on a ray of sunshine.

  When I finished stalking her other pictures, I noticed her profile picture changed from what it was, her in the back of a limo with her “besties” in Hilton Head, to the most horrifying thing I never wanted to see. An ultrasound picture.

  “Holy shit!” I said and grabbed my phone as the blood drained from my face.

  “Stephanie! Allysin...Alley Cat...the whore! Go to her page now!”

  “I thought you weren’t going to stalk her?” Stephanie said and yawned.

  “Please!” I said and cried. “I need you to tell me what I’m looking at. I am losing my fucking mind. Just tell me!”

  I clicked on her profile picture and was in a full-on, super-soaking sweat as I looked at the little speck of grey dust in the middle of a black background.

  “Maybe it’s a star?” I said as I pushed my face against the monitor.

  “Oh, wow,” Stephanie said. “Um...”

  “Maybe it’s not hers, you know, a sister’s or something? Maybe she’s gonna be an aunt?”

  “Look at it, Beth. It’s got her name at the top. And that is so not how she spells her real name! It’s Allison like every other Allison on the face of the earth spells fucking Allison!”

  I brought my face away from the monitor and focused on her name.

  “Allison Watson,” I said and sighed. “She’s eight weeks.”

  “Which would mean, what, Beth?” Stephanie said and cleared her throat.

  “Oh! Maybe it’s not his. I mean, maybe they met after we broke up and she’s already pregnant, you know?”

  “And when would that have happened? Yesterday? You think he broke up with you, happened to bump into Alley Cat over here and decide they want to go public on Facebook before they have their first date? On top of all of that, Billy Rider, who can’t even take care of a fucking library card, is so in love after one day, he tells her he’d be happy to raise another man’s child?”

  “It’s just that I don’t have proof that--”

  “Beth, wake the fuck up! Goddamn, he was cheating on you and he knocked some other chick up while he was doing it!”

  I stared at the ultrasound picture and shook my head.

  “This is just not...Stephanie, oh my God.”

  “You didn’t know, Beth. You didn’t want to see and you wanted to believe him because you love him. It happens to all of us.”

  “No, why doesn’t he want me? How can this boy who told me he’d never get married or have kids, rug rats, he called them, the boy who couldn’t even say that he loved me, dump me and now declares his relationship status on the Internet and has a baby with another chick?”

  “Beth, I’m coming down there. You’re hysterical.”

  “Shouldn’t I be? Wouldn’t it be a little fucking weird if I looked at this picture as I smiled and wondered where she’s gonna register for the shitty baby shower? I have to go. I’m going to be sick.”

  I dropped my phone on the counter and tripped over some beer cans that I missed as I flew into the bathroom and threw up. I rinsed my mouth out and went out to the break room. Someone left an Entenmann’s Pumpkin loaf cake in the refrigerator and I shoved my hand into the box, pulled out a fistful of cake and shoved it into my mouth as I sat down at the table. I thought of Billy and babies and chicks with double names and double lives. As I cried, I huffed out a plume of powdered sugar that drifted down across my boobs like dandruff.

  The doorbell to the front door rang and I held my breath as I waited for whoever walked through the door to leave. When the bell sounded again after a while, I sat back in my chair and took a breath as I wiped my face with a napkin. I stood up and the doorbell rang again.

  “Fuck me,” I whispered and shook my head.

  “Beth!” Stephanie called from the front of the store. “Beth!”

  I walked out from the back room and she threw her arms around me.

  “I’m fine,” I said as she hugged me.

  “Oh my God, I was so nervous driving over here. I nearly called Rebel Love to come.”

  I spotted the package on the counter and looked at her and shook my head.

  “What did you bring me?” I said.

  “Uh, I didn’t bring you anything.”

  I looked at her as I picked up the package, wrapped in brown kraft paper and dropped it back down on the counter.

  “You seriously didn’t bring this?” I said.

  “Nope. What’s it say?”

  I looked at the inscription, written in black Sharpie across the front of the package.

  “‘It was better to burn than to disappear’,” I said as I stared at the writing. “It’s a quote from something.”

  “Well, open it!”

  I turned the package over and carefully pu
lled the tape off the folds and spread the paper out. I flipped the slim paperback over and smiled as I stared at the cover. Stephanie looked at the book over my shoulder and giggled.

  “The Stranger, Albert Camus,” she said and clicked her tongue. “Well, that certainly ain’t from Billy Rider.”

  I flipped through the book and noticed the writing in the margins and the dog-eared pages.

  “It’s used,” Stephanie said and scoffed.

  “It’s perfect,” I said. “It’s from him.”

  “Him, who? Isn’t there a note?”

  “I know it’s from him,” I said and held the book against my chest. “I don’t need a note. Look.”

  I pointed at the title page and Stephanie stared at it and smiled.

  “Nicolas Miles, 86 North 10th Street, Brooklyn, 11211. Wow, he’s from New York? Maybe he just moved here.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t believe that he--”

  Stephanie hit my arm and I looked up at the door just as he walked through. He had a piece of paper and a pen in his hand and he held his arms out and smiled when he saw me and Stephanie at the counter.

  “Oh, man,” he said and scratched his head as he looked at me. “I realized I forgot to write a note. Um, well, that’s from me. An apology gift. I’m Nicolas.”

  He took a step toward me and held his hand out. I slipped my hand into his and he held on as he stared at me.

  “I’m Beth,” I said and smiled.

  “Beth,” he said. “That’s a really...you’re really pretty.”

  He released my hand and I smoothed my hair down. I pictured myself ripping the tight, white Henley off his chest as I pushed his Levi’s down his legs.

  “Um, so...” he said and cleared his throat as he looked at Stephanie.

  “I’m Stephanie,” she said and pushed me aside to shake his hand. “I’m sorry I called you a psycho yesterday. It was a bad day.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said and shook my head. “Really bad day. Sorry.”

  “Actually, it was psycho asshole, but I’m glad to meet you,” he said.

  “Thank you for the book,” I said and tapped on the cover. “I don’t know a lot of people who read philosophers.”