The Hate Vow by Nicole French
One
“You ready, baby girl?”
I scrunched my eyes shut in pure, unadulterated anticipation. I might have been way too close to thirty for my liking, but in that moment, I was like a child locked in her bedroom on Christmas morning. The utter sweet-tooth who has to wait until last to have a piece of cake at a birthday party. A lottery winner about to collect their winnings.
“I’m so ready I’m about to pee my pants,” I declared to Frederick, my hairstylist for the last five years.
“Please don’t,” he said in a British accent that I was pretty sure was as fake as his name, considering it seemed to change regions every couple of months. “More because you will ruin those fabulous leather pants, and I thought those were the centerpiece of your makeover, darling.”
Two years ago, Freddie here sounded like John Lennon. Last month, he was Eliza Doolittle. Today he was more like Posh Spice. But Frederick could pretend he was the Queen of England for all I cared. The man was the best colorist in Chicago. You don’t fuck with your colorist, my friends.
“Just do it,” I said as I stared into the mirror, knees shaking in anticipation. With a beige towel over my head and the way my nose was all scrunched up with excitement, I looked more like a Shar-Pei than a twenty-nine-year-old half-Korean former lawyer. I grabbed my glasses off the counter and shoved them on. I wanted to see the goods.
With a flourish, Frederick whipped off the towel, and suddenly my face was surrounded by jewel tones of purple, turquoise, blue, green, and most of all, pink—glorious, carnationy, Pepto Bismol-branded pink—all falling around my shoulders in a waterfall of rose-hued color. A wet, un-styled, waterfall, but oh my God, a flood of damn color after years of plain, boring black.
“Aaaaahhhh!” I screamed, wringing my hands like a teenager while Frederick smirked behind me.
“Like it, love?” he asked.
Please. He knew I did, the cocky fake Cockney.
“Like it?” I parroted while I clapped my hands together. “Like it? I freaking love it, you sarcastic gay monkey! I FLOVE it!”
Frederick grinned. “Well, calm yourself so I can blow it out properly, will you? Then you’ll really see what it looks like, mmkay? Now then, off with the specs.”
Obediently, I ripped off my cat-eye glasses while the blare of the hair dryer started. I hadn’t colored my hair in five years, since I started my first job out of law school at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in Chicago. Five years of abiding by strict court dress codes that made me look like a funeral director on her way to the library. Five years I had to shop at Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, and Macy’s while my soul slipped away with every swipe of my credit card.
So this. This was almost enough to make up for the fact that after five long years, the state had tossed me to the curb like old garbage. It helped me ignore the fact that as of yesterday afternoon, I was out of a job and out of an apartment, with no way to pay over two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of student loan debt. Everyone said a law degree from Harvard was supposed to be the ticket to success. Ha. Right. Everyone lied.
Maybe I should have seen it coming. I started fresh with one state’s attorney who was now moving on to greener pastures (it was nice to have a congresswoman’s name and number on my resume, I guessed). But when the next SA arrived, I ignored the way everyone else in my office started sending out resumes. I assumed that if I just kept my head down and did a good job, I’d carry over. I was an idiot. One year into the job, and it was the red wedding in there. Except it wasn’t people who were murdered—it was our burgeoning careers.
I was the only one who didn’t have a job lined up when the bloodshed occurred. And yet…the only thing I could think was fuck me, I can dye my hair again.
I blinked into the mirror, watching with glee as Frederick made quick work of the blow-out, brushing me free from the chains of public service tyranny. He twisted his brush around the candy-colored waves, and when he finished, I looked like a character from Jem and the Holograms. Truly outrageous indeed.
All that glitters is not gold, Jane Brain.
A sudden lump formed in my throat, the way it did whenever my dad’s voice, complete with the clichéd sayings and corny nicknames, popped into my head. It was happening less and less frequently these days, nine months after his death. Heart attacks kill. Who knew?
Clothes don’t make the man either, pumpkin.
I could still see his half-disapproving, half-amused expression. The way his lips curved under his thick gray beard while he crossed his stocky, gingham-covered arms. The way his eyes twinkled with humor under his ridiculous bucket hats. Whatever you say, Santa Claus, I’d tease him during the months when he’d been eating too many of my mother’s dumplings. Who would you be without your red suit, huh?
But Dad would just smile because he knew his point was made. It’s the inside that counts, Ms. Austen, he’d say, calling me after my namesake, my mother’s favorite author. And immediately, I’d feel guilty for teasing him about his belly. I’d feel guilty for thinking disparaging thoughts about his hat. After all, this was Carol Lefferts we were talking about. Psychologist to war vets. Captain of community service. The entire reason I had not only pursued a law degree instead of fashion, but used that degree for a career as a public servant.
Sorry, Dad, I thought as I watched my reflection. I couldn’t shake the feeling that even now, he was disappointed in me. After all, I was hiding from the career he had always encouraged me to follow. And now, without a job, with no future ahead of me, I was the worst thing of all in his eyes: a loafer. A dilettante. A waste.
“Puh-lease tell me you’re going out tonight to show off this fantastic work of art I’ve created,” Frederick said after he turned off the dryer. He tousled my hair around my face and looked expectantly at me through the mirror. “Hair this sexy deserves an orgasm, love. You know it’s true.” He leaned over. “I live vicariously through you now that Colin and I tied the knot. So, come on, give me the dirt on my Jane’s latest conquest.”
I smiled grimly. This was a request I heard a lot from my coupled-off friends, of which there seemed to be more and more these days. It was a parlor-trick—if, you know, people actually had freaking parlors. Tell the sad married people all about your sex life so they can pretend to have one. Or maybe it was just that their lives made me sad.
I knew exactly one couple who seemed to have better sex the longer they were together, and that was probably because Skylar and Brandon basically combusted whenever they didn’t see each other for more than a few hours. I mean, I was happy for my best friend, but she and her husband bordered on codependent. It worked for them, but that would drive me crazy. It wasn’t natural. The fire was supposed to go out when you were together for that long, not create a damn inferno.
But what did I know? Maybe I would have wanted to see a guy for more than one night too if he was a billionaire with a six-pack. Who looks like that at forty-two? Really? I didn’t know how my best friend did it, but she basically fell in love with Tony Stark. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d have hated her for it.
Frederick waited impatiently as he fluffed my hair. Once upon a time, I’d have been ready to play this game. I was the best at this game. A year ago, I had stories to tell, probably ones from the night before. When the sun went down and the courthouse was closed, I lived my life as God intended a young, sexually active woman to live: without fear or boundaries.
But here was my dirty little secret. I hadn’t actually taken a dip in the sea since Dad’s funeral. The worst of the grief had passed. But my mojo? She hadn’t come back.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t have memories I could rehash.
“Go forth and rock,” Frederick said after I finished telling him about James Carvey, the public defender I met at my first trial out of law school. The entire day was like pure foreplay—all that sparring, cross-examination of each other’s witnesses. Shaking my hips back and forth as I offered my closing statement. By the end of it, I was about ready to combust right there in front of the judge. And when the verdict came, we didn’t even care. James and I were locked in a closet in the basement of City Hall within an hour.
It was hot. And then it was done. Just how I liked it.
Or at least, how I used to.
“See you in six weeks, Freddy,” I said after I paid.
“You better,” he said. “I don’t want to see those roots, girl.”
Now it was back to my mother’s condo, where if I was smart, I’d spend the rest of the day sending out resumes so I’d be able to afford a new apartment before I killed my sire. But who wanted to be responsible with new hair the color of a bag of Jolly Ranchers? Fuck that. Tomorrow I could go back to being Sad Sally. Now was the time for Tinder. Time to celebrate the present.
And with that thought, I walked out of the shop and right into my past.
A chest of hard muscle. The smell of cologne and fresh linen. The face of the one person who almost convinced me to go against my better nature and settle down.
“What the fu—oh!” I looked up, fixing the glasses that were knocked off my nose. “Eric?”
He was the last person I ever thought I’d run into on a random street in Chicago. The man with a mouth sweeter than chocolate and a dick that tasted even better. The man who ordered me around like crazy, and more than that, made me love it. The man who, five years ago, utterly shattered my heart.
Eric de Vries.
* * *
Eric.Eric in Chicago. Eric wearing a gorgeous gray linen suit, with a jaw like an ice sculpture and eyes like a storm cloud.
Eric Sebastian Franklin Stallsmith de Vries standing in front of my hair salon exactly 984 miles from Boston.
I scowled. I hated that I still knew that. I hated that five years after we split up, I still knew the exact distance between me and the only man who made me forget about every other man out there. Because for a short period of time, he really was all I could see.
Rich.
Entitled.
Blue-blooded.
He hid it as best he could, but Eric’s Upper East Side pedigree was one of the worst-kept secrets at Harvard. You can’t really mask that kind of breeding, and Eric always radiated the calm, poised confidence only people from very wealthy backgrounds have. He was a mystery in every other way, and there were rumors he had done something terrible back home, which was why he wouldn’t talk about his family. Like, ever. But unlike the other trust fund brats at Harvard, Eric actually worked his ass off. He built his own legacy after school rather than depending on jobs from his family. Regardless of what happened between us, I always respected him for that.
Dad would have respected him too.
Dammit.
We met during our first year in law school, about one month into our second semester. Total opposites who fell into bed one night after binge drinking the way only overworked, overstressed Ivy League students can. I woke up the next morning in his apartment, wondering what the hell had happened to me. This wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t the strange apartment that got to me. It was the feeling like I…I don’t know…belonged there.
I kept trying to figure it out—by going back, that is—for exactly one month until the stressors of our torts class got to both of us, and we chucked each other to the curb. Two and a half years later, we reunited in another frenzy—there was no other way to put it—that crashed and burned like a NASCAR explosion. It was bad. Horrific. Life-alteringly horrible.
That was five years ago.
And now…holy shit, he looked good. Eric was always a tall, handsome fucker, if a little on the gawky side. Well, that gawky boy had definitely disappeared since the boy exited his twenties. All that was left was the handsome, and he was one hundred percent man.
Eric had the kind of face that could change on a dime. Fair and blond, but not overwhelming. One second, he’d look as ordinary as could be; the next, you couldn’t stop looking at him. Skylar always chalked up that shift to his “lady-killer smile,” but Eric had a whole repertoire of scene-stealing expressions. And the most effective wasn’t the smile that could light up a room (though it could). It was the one where he looked at you like he wanted to spank you black and blue—and he knew you wanted him to do it. Bad. From Boy Scout to YES, DADDY in less than a second.
A shiver practically tossed me two steps forward. Whoa. That was a trip down memory lane I hadn’t visited much in the last five years.
So, I did what I did best. I deflected. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Eric cracked a sly smile and raised an eyebrow. Something else that hadn’t changed: that infuriating unflappability. “Nice to see you too, Jane.”
Once again, my vision was clouded by another memory—that wide, soft mouth, drifting over my navel just before he—Stop it, Jane. What in the hell? Nine months of the Sahara Desert, and all of a sudden, I was a river. Of memories and mojo alike. I couldn’t go there. Not with him. Not now. Not ever.
I folded my arms. But when I didn’t say anything, I was finally, finally rewarded with something more than a smirk when Eric rubbed the back of his neck and straightened the collar of his starched white shirt.
“I’m here to see you,” he admitted. “Skylar told me you were having your hair done today.” He glanced over my now-flaming rainbow pink tresses. At least that looked amazing.
“Skylar told you…” I murmured to myself, only then remembering our conversation the night before. “God, Anne of Green Gables is such a damn blabbermouth. She can’t ever keep her mouth shut. So, what, you just hopped on a plane to witness my makeover?”
This wasn’t random. That much was obvious. It wasn’t like Eric and I had never seen each other in the last five years. We had morphed into used-to-fuck acquaintances locked in an antagonistic truce because Skylar Crosby, his partner and my best friend, was an important part of both our lives. I still visited Boston whenever I could, especially now that Skylar and Brandon had two adorable kids to whom I happened to be godmother. And the Crosby-Sterling household loved to entertain their Auntie Jane. When Eric and I had been forced to be around each other, we’d maintained wide circles, wary and mostly tolerant. You know, like cats. The ones who might pounce on each other in a dark alley. And tear each other’s fur out.
But generally, Eric and I just avoided situations where we both might be present. He got them full time, so when I was in town, he made himself scarce. Our feline truces were few and far between.
Eric cracked another smile at the nickname. Skylar tended to be a bit of a know-it-all and had bright red hair, just like the titular character of L.M. Montgomery’s classic.
“Well, I was in town, and I asked her what you might be up to,” he said. “Do you always tell her when you’re having your hair done? Seems a little codependent to me.”
“Says the guy who stalked me to the salon,” I retorted. “God, look at us. We look like fucking Spy vs. Spy, do you know that?”
Eric looked down at his light gray pants and white Oxford shirt, then back at my all-black ensemble. It was a little warm for them, but I was enjoying the fact that I could wear leather pants, a black concert tee, and my favorite combat boots in the light of day again. We were dressed like opposites. Yin and yang. Except, you know, for the pom-pom hair.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
“I’m wearing perfectly appropriate clothes for mid-May,” he returned, though his mouth twitched again. “No one said you have to walk around looking like the grim reaper on acid.”
“Whatever you say, Zack Morris.”
Eric mimicked faux horror. “Saved by the Bell? Really? You’ve lost your touch, Jane. I am way better dressed than Zack Morris.”
I just shrugged. He really made this too easy. “Fine, Preppy. You look like Zack Morris after he dropped out of school and started selling used cars.”
We chuckled, letting the string of jokes settle. The truth was, I missed this kind of back-and-forth. Most guys couldn’t take my particular brand of caustic humor. It always amazed me how women were constantly accused of being the more emotional sex, because most men I knew could barely take a joke.
Eric, on the other hand, never seemed to mind. He wouldn’t always trade barbs, exactly. He just sort of absorbed it all without a response, which, of course, just made me taunt him more. If it bothered him too much, he had ways of making me pay for it later. Ways that frequently included rope or some kind of restraints; maybe a gag if he was feeling creative. Hell, sometimes I wanted the payback. Eric would get this gleam in his steely eyes, and I’d act like a toddler about to knock over her block tower. Then I’d call him “Petri dish” and find myself with my hands tied behind my back, ass in the air in about fifteen seconds…
I shivered again, this time with a shock of delight. More memories. Shit. When I said I wanted my mojo back, that was not what I had in mind.
“So, what do you think?” Eric interrupted my daydream. “Do you have some time for coffee?”
I blinked. “What? Oh, um…wait, why are you even here? You couldn’t have just called me like a normal person?”
He swallowed visibly while he shoved his hands into his pockets a little harder than normal. Inwardly, I threw a mental fist into the air. I was getting under his skin. Ha!
“It’s not really the kind of thing I can talk about over the phone.”
Color me intrigued. I tipped my glasses down my nose, noticing for the first time the signs of clear distress. Two days of stubble on a normally clean-shaven jaw. His shirt was slightly wrinkled from travel—had he come straight from the airport? And his deep gray eyes, which still sparked as he watched me, bore tiny wrinkles at the sides and dark circles underneath. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Is that so, Petri dish?” I said, using the old nickname I gave him in law school. It was the best I could come up with. Eric got around even more than I did in those days. He was basically an STI incubator.
But there was no twitch in his mouth at the jibe, no sudden appearance of the dimple I used to lick from time to time, and immediately, I regretted it. Not just for the way it clearly irritated him, but also for the next wave of memories that washed over me. The bad ones. Starting with the last time he was in Chicago.
Eric showing up to tell me he loved me after one of our many breaks. The other dude lying in my bed from the night before. Me flying back to Boston to beg him to try again. And after I finally thought we might be able to make it work…finding the red, fake-satin thong shoved in the bottom of his sheets. Every fear I’d ever had about committing to a man who had already slept his way around half of Boston bubbled upward until I was shouting at him loud enough for the entire building to hear.
He wasn’t good enough for me. He wasn’t worth my time.
Now on the street, Eric didn’t move, just kept his hands in his pockets and waited, patiently as ever, for me to respond. Eric would wait. He’d always wait. As long as it took for someone to talk.
Some things never change.
I flipped my hair over my shoulder with more attitude than was strictly necessary. “Fine,” I said. “There’s a cafe around the corner. We can talk there.”
