Make Me Hate You(4)

He kissed me slowly, surely, as if he hadn’t had a second guess about it before in his life. And when he pulled back, he waited, watching me carefully, asking for permission to do it again.

I answered with my hands sliding up his chest, over his shoulders, and into his hair, slicking my lips before I pulled him into me and kissed him back.

I kissed him back.

His response was instant, his arms full around me, crushing me into him as he deepened the kiss. A throaty moan came from his chest, and I gasped at the way it shook me to the core.

Oh my God.

I’m kissing my best friend’s brother.

I’m kissing Tyler Wagner.

And I never want to stop.

And just like I hadn’t known that a heart could break the way mine did when my mother left, I didn’t know what it felt like to be touched like that by a boy. Sure, James and I had slept together, but it had been quick and clumsy most of the time, and I’d been mostly lost and confused, assuming that was just what it was like for the girl.

But this… this was something else altogether.

I didn’t know what it was to be wanted so desperately that each kiss felt like a fire searing every inch of skin covering my bones. I didn’t know what it was to tremble and shake, to be lowered back into pillows and sheets with hands so careful and confident that every other thought left my head completely. I didn’t know what it was to feel a mixture of extreme passion and somehow familiar safety all at once, to succumb to something so forbidden, and to love it like nothing I’d ever loved before.

We crossed every line that night — and I went from loving my best friend’s brother in secret to wanting nothing more than to love him out loud.

I lost myself inside that moment, inside that room, inside that night with Tyler.

But of course, that was because I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.

I didn’t know that the next day, Tyler would ignore me completely, avoiding my eyes in his house and ignoring my texts when I left later that evening.

I didn’t know he would call me three days later and tell me it was all a mistake, that we could never tell anyone, that it could never happen again.

I didn’t know that the first time I felt truly wanted, and truly loved, was all a lie.

But I found out quickly.

I finished the last week of high school with a broken heart — broken from my mother, from Tyler, from my expectations on life — and I walked across the graduation stage in a numb trance.

One week after that, I left my New England hometown on the first day of summer.

I promised myself I’d never go back.

And that I’d never talk to Tyler Wagner again.





June 6th, 2020





7 years later


Outside the car that drove me through the small town of Bridgechester, New Hampshire, nothing had changed.

The colorful colonial houses and small businesses still peppered the brick streets, gold plaques boasting the historic significance of each one along the way. The air that blew through the open windows still smelled like a New England summer — fresh and clean and woodsy, the humid summer heat seeping in and frizzing my long, freshly bleached blonde hair. Bridgechester Prep still had the same mascot, the same crimson and gold lettered signs congratulating the recent graduates, and the same castle-esque brick build.

The town still centered around Lake Tambow, its cool, clear waters drawing tourists from all over during the summer, and the colorful turn of the leaves drawing them in all through the fall.

Outside the car, that town was exactly what it had always been.

But inside the car, there was me.

And I was nothing like the girl who’d left seven years ago.

My chest was tight as the Uber drove through downtown and then out toward the west side, each street and turn so familiar even after all these years. I watched the White Mountains in the distance as we climbed the steep street that led to the long and winding drive I never thought I’d see again, the one that led to the house I swore I’d never step foot inside of after that night.

But after all this time, Morgan was still my best friend.

And last week, she’d called me to tell me she’s getting married.

In two weeks.

I chuckled to myself, because only Morgan would announce a wedding with less than three weeks to plan it.

Of course, she’d given me the title of Maid of Honor, and I knew I’d have my hands full trying to help her pull off a Wagner-worthy wedding in fourteen days. No doubt she’d want the very best, and I was thankful that at least the majority of my time would be occupied with wedding tasks.

Because at the root of everything, there was a gnawing pit in my stomach being back in my hometown — one I promised myself I’d never return to.

It’d been easy up until this point — relatively so, anyway. Aunt Laura had always come to visit me in Oakland, assuming that Bridgechester held bad memories for me because of my mom. And that was part of it, though not the most pressing, if I was being honest. Morgan had obliged, too. She loved any excuse to travel to a warmer climate and see the west coast. Of course, she had begged me a few times to come visit her, especially when we were in college, but I’d somehow managed to avoid it.

Until now.

When your best friend is getting married, you do whatever she asks of you — no arguments, no excuses.