The Love Haters

Twelve

IN THE END, I passed the test.

I was afraid I might get caught again, so Hutch went underwater both times to watch me—but I did fine. When it was time to get out of the pool, he hoisted me out by the armpits and wrapped the towel around me before anyone—I hope—could see my makeshift bottom half.

Hutch thought it was all hilariously funny.

Endlessly, hilariously, bent-at-the-waist funny.

I couldn’t even go home and hide after that. I had to go back to the station with everybody else and walk around pretending my human dignity hadn’t just been steamrollered into oblivion.

I would have loved to try to forget about it. But I couldn’t.

Because Hutch could not stop laughing.

By the time we were driving home, I was pretty mad about it.

“Would you please stop laughing?” I said, rolling down the window.

“I’m not laughing at you,” Hutch said. “I’m laughing because of you.”

“You laughed at me all day.”

“I saved you first, though.”

There was an upside, though: no swim lessons tonight.

After Hutch dropped me off, I took a long shower and had just put on a fresh uniform of my usual black T-shirt and jeans when Rue showed up at the door with yet another gift bag.

“Rue,” I said. “You can’t keep buying me clothes.”

“Sure I can.”

“I’ve seen the price tags in your boutique.”

“Who else am I going to spend my fortune on?”

“This is all because I remind you of your former self?”

“This is all because I’ve decided I can help you. And I need a project.”

I pulled an embroidered black-and-white cotton blouse out of the bag.

“Put it on,” she urged. “It’s perfect for you.”

Yes, she kept dressing me up like a paper doll. But her heart was in such a good place. It was only a shirt, after all. I could meet her halfway. As long as I could keep my butt safely tucked away in my jeans.

I kind of hoped Hutch might not come back to the Starlite for dinner that night—in part because I knew he’d tell the whole bathing suit story to The Gals, and in part because it really was time to level with him, for real, about why I needed him to do the “Day in the Life.” We were at the deadline.

But Hutch did come back. And he sat down right next to me and The Gals as we drank our predinner sangrias, and then, as predicted, he regaled the whole group with the tale of my makeshift-diaper moment, relishing every detail.

When Rue sent us for some more ice, on the walk back across the lawn, it was finally time to make the ask. Maybe he’d feel guilty about all the laughing he’d done at my expense and capitulate. I had to take the shot, either way.

I was about to say it. I really was. I had just opened my mouth to say, I need to ask you to save my job… But that’s when Ginger met us with my phone in her hand. “Here you go,” she said. “It’s been buzzing off the table.”

I took it and, as Ginger and Hutch went off to take the ice to Rue, I fell behind to check the screen. There were twenty texts—with new ones still dinging like crazy—all pure outrage: OMG and !!!!! and the scream emoji.

All question-asking of Hutch was forgotten. I scrolled through to find my best source for clarity: Beanie. Her text just said, Call me before you click that link.

But another text came in on top of it from a former colleague I hadn’t seen in a year, and it had the link in it. Right there. So clickable. And the impulse to find out what the hell was going on was so strong that against Beanie’s very clear advice, I clicked it.

The second I saw the headline, I clapped the phone to my chest, instinctually making sure no one else could see it.

I looked again. Had I really seen what I just saw?

A millisecond confirmed it.

Yes.

It was an article on a gossip site. In a bold font, the headline read:

REAL-LIFE “KATIE” FROM THE SONG EXPOSED!

EX-FIANCéE OF LUCAS BANKS HAS REALLY LET HERSELF GO

Under it was a photo of me. For proof.

Proof that I looked… terrible.

But it wasn’t some sneaky paparazzi photo. Not some grainy, stolen image of me. Not even a recent one.

The photo with this article was from five years ago . Before Lucas got famous, and before we were engaged, and before I’d ever been mocked online. I had posted this photo myself . It was just a screenshot from my social media—back when I used to do that kind of thing. It was the kind of sweet, na?ve picture you’d post if you thought it was only for your friends. I was smiling, and wearing a different, but similar, floral dress to the one the internet had hated so much at the Billboard Awards.

It was a photo, in fact, that I’d always liked.

A photo I’d always thought was kind of… pretty.

I scanned the article—all about the “true story” behind the song. And then it described a version of my life, somehow managing to get the basic gist of it all pretty right and 75 percent of the details totally wrong, the reporter concluding soundly that after Lucas cheated, I became suicidal and gained fifty pounds. Or a hundred. Depending on the source.

The confidence of the tone was astonishingly destabilizing. The author of this article—a person who went by the simple moniker “Lissi G”—was so certain about everything, it made me pause for a second.

Had I become suicidal?

There were some pretty dark days in there.

Had I gained fifty pounds?

Given that Beanie had burned my scale, we might never know.

But one thing was certain. This girl in this photo hadn’t done either of those things. Because her future heartbreaks hadn’t happened to her yet.

I peeked back at the phone in my hand, and as my brain realized what my body was about to do, a ticker-tape warning started zipping across my mind: Don’t check the comments. Do not check the comments!

… Even as— yeah —I checked the comments.

What was I hoping for?

I have no idea. I knew it was a bad choice. I knew the internet wasn’t going to rise up in inspiring unison to defend me. I was not—and I knew this —going to see comments like, “Hey! Leave this girl alone! She’s lovely, and she’s fine, she seems like a nice person—and it’s this exact toxicity that’s going to bring down human civilization.”

All checking could possibly do was make things so much worse.

But my hand moved of its own will, anyway, and my fingers stroked the screen, and my eyes followed the text down.

And then, there they were.

Hideous.

Hopeless.

Nightmare.

This just ruined the song for me.

I can never unsee this.

She should kill herself.

I knew that “She should kill herself” was kind of the “Have a nice day” of the internet… but it was still beyond jarring to see it.

At last—too late—I squeezed my eyes closed and summoned the will to click the phone off. I felt an ache in my core like I’d been stomach-punched. Then I raised my arm, drew it back, and pelted the phone with all my might across the yard, watching it bounce a couple of times in the grass before landing out of sight.

When I turned, Hutch was heading my way to check on me.

He saw my face, and then he looked from me to the patch of grass where my phone was and back again.

“Don’t go after it,” I said, feeling like my voice was far away. “Don’t even touch it.” Then, to make sure he really understood: “If you go anywhere near that phone, I swear to God, I will light myself on fire.”

Hutch gave an alarmed nod that said, Message received.

And then I just started walking.

There was nothing to do in this moment. I wasn’t going to show him the article. I wasn’t going to talk about it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to just resume my pleasant evening .

No plan, no thoughts—just instinct.

Time to move.

“Hutch, where’s she going?” Rue called as I went by. “Dinner’s ready.”

Dinner , I thought. How ridiculous.

I left the cottages behind—no purse, no phone, not even any shoes—and just strode out into the city streets. I wasn’t headed anywhere. I didn’t have a plan. I was just a person on fire with humiliation —doomed to try to outrun the flames.

I have no idea what route I took, or what streets I walked, or how much time went by.

Eventually, I wound up crossing the cobblestone streets of Old Town and slowing down, finally, at Mallory Square, where Rue had told me folks gathered every night to celebrate the sunset.

It was sunset now, and the park was full. The mood there in no way matched my scorched-earth vibe. The wind careened by. Party boats churned past. People perched on the empty cruise ship docks, leaning on each other’s shoulders as they watched the water and the sky. Others milled around, watching a guy playing acoustic guitar, and a Hula-Hooper doing some mighty impressive tricks, and a guy busking on a unicycle and playing an accordion. Even the food vendors were adorable: Conch Fritter Fred, Pineapple Rita, a lady selling two-bite key lime pies.

Why did everybody else being okay just make me feel worse?

I found a metal railing by the water and leaned against it, gripping the cool, smooth bar with my palms.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt panicked. Trapped. Caged inside my body. And all I wanted, all I could even think about wanting, was out.

But there was no way out.

That’s the thing about having a body. You only get one, and you’re trapped in it from beginning to end.

What would Beanie say right now? I didn’t have to think too hard on that one.

First she would make me name some new body part that I loved—a knuckle, or a nostril, or a cowlick. And then she would tell me to stand up for myself.

And my voice would tremble as I told her, “I don’t know how.”

And then she would insist, very gently, that I wasn’t stuck inside of my body. It wasn’t some prison my soul was caged in. The two things were—and only ever had been—one thing. I was it, and it was me. We were the same.

It was a simple truth: I couldn’t abandon myself.

And as much as that was a curse, it was also a blessing.

I got it. I knew what she meant. I had a choice, and, as complicated as it was, it was also so simple. I could agree with all those ghouls on the internet… or I could make a choice to disagree. As that realization took hold, I saw it in my head like it was happening. As if a jeering crowd surrounded me on this very dock: the me from that photo in her floral dress, down on her knees. I could walk over to join the crowd and jeer along with them… or I could kneel down next to myself, and put my arm around that girl, and help her to her feet. I could squeeze her in a tight hug, and say into her ear—closer and louder than everyone else: “I see you. They’re wrong. You’re beautiful.”

What would happen if I did that?

They might jeer at both of us, I guess.

Though… if she was me and I was her , they were already doing that, anyway.

I remembered an article about bullying that said onlookers often didn’t stand up for bullied kids for fear that they would become targets themselves. But research showed that was almost never how it went. Even one other kid standing up for the victim could change the outcome.

I could choose to be that one other kid. For myself.

I could stay with her, and help her up, and we could turn to watch the sunset, side by side. I could keep one arm around her, and we could watch the sky darken until the moonlight sparkled on the waves, and listen to the water lapping the dock, and be okay together.

What if I showed up like that every time?

That exact crowd had lurked in my imagination for years—some amalgamation of every person who had ever made me feel bad. Every stepmom who had ever told me to “suck in,” every photoshopped lady in every magazine, every mean-ass person on the internet.

If you don’t reject the harsh things people say to you, then I guess, at some point, that means you accept them.

That crowd was my imagination, after all.

The comments had been real—maybe, I guess. If anything on the internet is real.

But everybody who followed me after I threw my phone in the grass?

Those people were all me. My fears. My worries. My unchallenged beliefs.

Maybe standing up to them wouldn’t be that hard after all. I didn’t have to fight them. I didn’t have to outsmart them, or argue, or win. All I had to do was turn toward myself.

Was that a strategy? Would that work?

I had the strangest feeling like it might.

And what, at this point, did I have to lose?

THAT’S WHEN I felt, more than saw, someone show up next to me at the railing.

I turned. It was Hutch, and he had Rue’s bike with him. He’d followed me.

He smiled, squinting in the warm orange light.

“You followed me?” I asked.

“Rue told me to,” he said.

We all knew better than to disobey Rue.

“But I would have done it, anyway.”

I nodded, and I looked at the bike.

“Thought you might need a ride home,” Hutch said.

A sailboat was gliding by on the water.

“Do you know you don’t have any shoes on?” Hutch asked then.

I looked down. Sure enough, I didn’t.

Hutch kicked off his own sneakers and left them next to my feet.

I didn’t put them on—just turned my attention back to the water. “That’s a kind offer,” I said.

“What’s going on?” Hutch asked then.

Half an hour ago, I would have said, Nothing.

But if I was going to try to stand up for myself, it might be easier if I had some company. It was a risk, though. It was possible that Hutch might decide to stand with the crowd. I looked over at Hutch’s fit, fearless profile. There was no way on earth he’d ever experienced anything like what I was feeling right now.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be on my side.

I took a breath and decided to take a chance on him.

“When I used to be engaged to Lucas Banks,” I said, “that first year he got famous… I went with him to an awards show. And I wore a vintage, funky dress with flowers on it, and the internet decided I looked terrible—and then went insane writing hateful comments about me.”

I glanced at Hutch.

“Thousands,” I said. “I won’t repeat them.”

He nodded, like Okay .

“In the wake of it,” I said, “I was very mean to myself. And I kind of stopped eating. For a year or so. And I tried very hard to be”— How to put it? —“skinny enough to be invisible.” But maybe that wasn’t right. I shook my head. “Skinny enough to be safe from criticism.”

Hutch squinted, like Huh.

“And I might have lived that way forever, except that then Lucas cheated on me, and then left me, and then I fell apart, and then my cousin Beanie staged an intervention and set my scale on fire.”

Hutch nodded, like None of this is weird.

“And, after that, slowly, I got better. I’ve been working on it very hard—finding a way to be okay. Burning that scale really helped. Also, getting away from Lucas. And keeping a journal. And… coming here.” I waved my hands. “Stuff. You know. Personal growth. Exposure therapy. Rue makes it hard to be invisible.”

Hutch stepped closer.

I took a breath. “But then today…” My voice disintegrated. I wished the epiphany I’d just had would take all the sting out of it—but it didn’t. I looked up at the sky and tried again. “Today, an article popped up on a gossip site with a photo of me, saying—” I felt a hitch of worry that I shouldn’t mention specifics. What if Hutch agreed with them? But I pushed on: “Saying… that I was ugly.”

Wow, that word tasted bad in my mouth.

But I will never be able to repay Hutch for the total, unmitigated shock that overtook his face as I said it. “What?!” he said.

I nodded. “Saying I was so ugly that I should kill myself.”

And then, Hutch did a funny thing: He laughed.

A quick little laugh. And then a headshake.

That got my attention. I frowned. “Are you laughing?”

Hutch shrugged. “I mean, it’s funny.”

“Is it?”

“It’s mean as shit, but it’s funny, too.”

What did that mean, exactly—for him to think it was funny? Nothing about this was funny. Was he so obtuse that he couldn’t see that? Was he so callous that he enjoyed laughing at other people’s pain? Did he have such a terrible sense of humor that he didn’t know the difference between funny and life-destroyingly cruel ? Was he so unrelentingly handsome that he had no capacity for empathy about what being called ugly might even feel like?

I swallowed, then steeled myself, then met his eyes. “What about this, exactly, is funny?”

Hutch frowned, like What else? “How jealous they are.”

“What?”

“The people leaving those comments. They’re so jealous.”

“Of—what?”

And then, in the most straight-shooting, unselfconscious way, in a tone like What else could we possibly be talking about? , Hutch said, “Of you.”

Then, when I didn’t respond in any way, Hutch prompted: “Of how pretty you are.”

Important addendum: I was not one of those pretty girls who didn’t know she was pretty.

Equally important extra addendum: apparently, Hutch thought I was.

I just stared.

“Right?” Hutch went on, reading my face and intuiting that I might have come to a different interpretation—but unable to fathom what it could be. “Those people are on the internet, looking at a photo of the ex-fiancée of a famous singer. The ex! And you’re so pretty, they have to go after you.”

“You haven’t seen the picture, have you?”

“I don’t have to see the picture.” He pointed at me. “You’re right here.”

Bizarre. I’d worried that telling him might change how he saw me. But it never occurred to me that it might change how I saw myself.

Hutch tilted his head and frowned. “Wait,” he said. “You didn’t— believe them , did you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

“Katie, tell me that’s not why you’ve been crying.”

But I couldn’t. Because I could feel myself starting to cry again.

“Oh, my god,” Hutch said, breaking away and pacing off—by all indications, angrily —before U-turning back.

Wait. Was he mad at me right now? What was going on?

But then, from a bit of a distance, Hutch shouted, “Those assholes!”

Not me , then.

“I can’t believe you believed them!”

Or maybe a little.

Hutch went on: “A famous singer wrote a chart-topping love song about you, so they have to bring you down. You have something they don’t— many things they don’t. You have that guy pining for you. You have a ballad that sings your praises all over the airways. Your name is on everyone’s lips. And look at you!” Hutch gestured at my whole vibe, and then he took a few steps closer. “You’ve got that—mouth, and those… lips. And you’ve got this—I don’t know—brightness that radiates out, and this effect on people.” Hutch was closer now. “I can’t figure out what it is, but it’s something about the way you laugh, or maybe the curve of your neck, or…” He paused, just inches away now, and took in the sight of me. “It’s just a fact. It’s just reality. You’re just… You’re like a human hot-fudge sundae or something.”

In the past, I’d coped with the meanness by just shutting down—like a little pill bug curling up into a ball. But this time was different. Hutch wasn’t letting me shut down—or maybe he was just giving me a better option. Because if I did that, I’d be missing this exquisite monologue about how great I was.

No way was I missing that.

“You think I’m… a human hot-fudge sundae ?” I asked, wondering if that might be the nicest thing I’d ever hear.

By the time I asked that question, Hutch was close enough to reach on either side of me and hold on to the railing behind, pinning me there. And then he raised his face to mine, just inches away.

And then—deliberately and slowly, so I could make no mistake about it—he nodded.

Um. Was giving myself an imaginary hug the best idea I could think of ten minutes ago?

Because this was also very effective .

“But—” I protested. “But you’ve been laughing at me all day.”

There was that famous frown again. “That’s not the same kind of laughing.”

“It isn’t?”

“No,” Hutch said, with conviction.

“But you…” I wasn’t sure how to say it. “Today, when you covered me up with a towel… it was like you couldn’t stand it.”

“That’s right,” Hutch said. “I couldn’t stand it.”

I took a ragged breath.

But then Hutch said, “In a good way.”

What did that mean?

“Did you think I did that,” Hutch asked, “because I didn’t like the sight of you?”

I held very still.

“Katie, it was the opposite.”

“What does that mean? The opposite ?”

“It means I liked the sight of you too much .”

I kept frowning.

“The kind of laughing I was doing today,” Hutch said, “was not the kind of laughing you do to hurt someone. God, I hope you knew that.”

“I wasn’t sure what kind of laughing it was, actually.”

“It was the kind of laughing you do when you’re supposed to be testing a woman for crash readiness during a workday for your job and she strips down to a swimsuit right in front of your eyes and the sight of her somehow makes your brain stop working.”

“Your brain stopped working?”

Hutch nodded. “It did.”

“Why?”

“Because every time I’m around you—and today was the worst of all—I want…” He shook his head. “I just want… everything .”

I looked down. I’m not sure why my eyes filled up with tears again, but they did.

But Hutch ducked down again to catch my gaze and bring me back. Then he stared into my eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I wasn’t sure. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that when I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you. And waiting to see you again. And we’ve spent all day, every day together for weeks now—and it already feels like it’ll never be enough.”

He was gazing at me so openly, I got caught spellbound.

And then I thought, He’s going to kiss me.

He was so dark and serious. So intense. So unwilling to look away. It was the intensity that happens from closeness—that tug that magnets have when they get close enough. It was the way he seemed to want so desperately to say things that he couldn’t fit into words.

You know that feeling when someone’s about to kiss you? That tension? That palpable anticipation? How everything slows down and seems to matter in a whole new way?

That was the feeling I had. And it pushed out all the others.

There was no internet in that moment. No Lucas. No struggle against the howling winds of self-hatred. There was only Hutch, and his frowny eyes, and me. Everything else blurred away.

Was this how this ridiculous day was going to end?

Not with me weeping at the edge of the ocean—but with a kiss?

I could feel my breaths rolling in and out of my lungs like waves.

I could hear the ocean all around us. I could feel the sea breeze whispering past. I felt lost in something bigger than myself—time, or space, or maybe just Hutch’s gaze. I have never in all my life looked into another person’s eyes for so long. But I couldn’t look away.

And I didn’t want to.

And then Hutch leaned in closer. “You can’t believe them,” he said then, his voice sounding mesmerized, dropping his gaze to my mouth. “How could you believe them?”

And with that, he bent his head. And the truth—that he was definitely, absolutely, one million percent going to kiss me—seemed utterly impossible and completely inevitable at the same time. I wondered if this would be the kind of kiss that would eclipse all other kisses.

It felt that life-changing.

Then that same hand of mine that had checked all those comments without permission decided to go in another direction. To reach for something good this time.

I brought it up behind Hutch’s buzz cut and palmed its velvety texture.

And then I gave a slight, kiss me tug.

And that was all the permission Hutch needed.

He dove in and pressed his mouth to mine.