Hate Notes

Charlotte Darling, I typed into the search bar.

It had been at least six months since I’d even signed on to Facebook. Social media wasn’t my thing. But it was after midnight, and I still couldn’t fall asleep. Surprisingly, the bed was comfortable enough in the standard economy hotel room my whack-job assistant had booked me into. I just felt restless and couldn’t fall asleep for some reason.

Since Charlotte had invaded my privacy and stalked me, I figured I’d return the favor. I started with her pictures. The last picture she’d posted was a few hours ago—an arty-looking shot of the hotel pool with some kind of a filter on it. The caption underneath it read Just keep swimming. Those three little words pretty much summed up Charlotte Darling’s outlook on life. Her ability to see the positive in a negative situation drove me nuts, yet I couldn’t help but admire it in some way.

Fender bender and stuck in the sticks at a three-star hotel? While I groaned and thought “inconvenience” and “bed bugs,” Charlotte picked up her pom-poms and cheered “hotel pool” and “Ruby Tuesday!”

I clicked to the next picture. What the fuck? Is that . . . me?

She must’ve snuck and snapped the picture on the drive out here. The picture was only of my hand, so no one except me would even know who it was. But, of course, I recognized my own damn hand. My fingers were wrapped around the steering wheel, gripping it so tight that it looked like I was attempting to choke the shit out of it. My knuckles were white, and the veins in my hand and forearm were bulging. Why was I strangling the damn steering wheel? My eyes dropped to the caption she’d given the shot: Let it go.

What the hell? She had some nerve taking a picture of me and posting it on social media, even if no one would recognize it was me. Let it go. I had the urge to march three doors down and let it go, alright.

What else might Ms. Darling have posted about me? I clicked to the next photo. It was a shot of a vase painted with bright purple flowers. The caption read Create your own happiness. Create irises. This was probably the vase I’d knocked from her hands that she’d made for my grandmother. I zoomed in on the photo. Wow. Charlotte had talent if she’d made this—it was actually beautiful.

The next photo was a close-up of Charlotte and an older woman that I thought might be her mother. Their cheeks were pressed together, and their smiles were wide. The caption read Because of you, I am.

The next photo was of her and a woman about the same age standing on the beach, wearing bikinis and big straw hats while holding up drinks with umbrellas. Damn. Charlotte had some body—a lot of curves for a tiny girl. She wasn’t stick thin like Allison. And unlike Allison, who had perfectly plumped, round, fake tits, Charlotte had full, natural, feminine breasts. I might’ve zoomed in on that shot for a while, wondering how much softer they’d feel in my hands.

Fuck.

This was a bad idea.

I clicked back to my own Facebook page to escape getting sucked into the little blonde vortex any further. Only there wasn’t much to see there. The last pictures posted were of Allison and me out on a boat last summer. I remembered when she’d taken that last shot on my phone and admired it. We looked happy. At least I thought we did at the time. What a goddamn fool I was. I gazed at her like she was the sun causing the warmth on my face. Little did I know, I should’ve doused myself in sunscreen because I was about to get burned.

I blew out a deep breath. Why hadn’t I posted anything since then?

Then again, what the hell would I post? Me at the office at eleven o’clock at night? A picture of takeout Chinese for one? Maybe a shot of my dog and me? Oh, that’s right. Allison took him, too, when she packed the rest of her shit.

I couldn’t stand to look anymore. I began to close my laptop but stopped myself and instead clicked back to Charlotte’s page. She had a shitload of recent pictures. Not knowing what I was looking for yet unable to stop searching, I clicked for the next picture, then the next, then the next.

A shot of Charlotte in the arms of some guy caught my attention. They were all dressed up, and his arms were locked around her little waist as they kissed. She had one hand wrapped around his neck and the other was holding out her hand to the camera with her fingers splayed wide. My eyes dropped to read the caption, I said yes, before returning to the photo to examine the rock on her finger. She wasn’t wearing that ring anymore. Maybe Little Miss Crazy and I really did have something in common after all . . . other than we both liked her in a red bikini.

The next morning, I went in search of coffee downstairs in the hotel. I stopped short, spotting Charlotte inside the small gym, and watched through the top of the glass door. What the hell is she doing? She was alone in the tiny mirrored room. Only she wasn’t exercising. She was sitting on one of those big exercise balls, bouncing up and down, while watching the television hanging on the wall and chewing on a Twizzler.

I shook my head and chuckled. God, she’s so nuts.

When I opened the door, her head whipped around to look at who had walked in, and it must’ve thrown off her balance. She bounced up and then hit the corner of the ball with her hip, causing her next bounce to land her flat on her ass on the floor.

Shit.

I walked over and extended my hand. “Are you okay?”

She smacked at her chest with her hand and spoke with a strained voice. “I just swallowed a piece of Twizzler down the wrong pipe because of you.”

“Because of me? How is it my fault?”

“You scared me.”

I arched a brow. “It’s a public gym in a hotel, Charlotte. People are going to come and go. That’s how facilities open to the public work. No appointment necessary.”

She clasped my extended hand and gave it a yank that was harder than necessary to get up. “God, you’re so condescending. Do you hear yourself?”

Standing, she brushed imaginary dirt from her clothes and hands. That’s when I got my first look at her outfit. I’d been so preoccupied watching her bounce up and down on that stupid ball that I hadn’t noticed it before.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

She looked down. “Betsy gave me this. They keep a stash of new clothes donated from local businesses for emergencies. You know, like when guests lose their luggage on flights and stuff.”

“Betsy?”

“The woman at the front desk who checked us in? She introduced herself to you and wears a name tag.”

Whatever. Charlotte’s outfit was interesting, to say the least. She wore a black T-shirt with the Applebee’s logo emblazoned across the front, coupled with a pair of men’s Gold’s Gym shorts that were rolled at the waist yet still fell to her knees. But the most intriguing part of the getup was her exercise footwear—white terry cloth slippers that were four sizes too big, with “Holiday Inn” written across the front.

“You can’t use the equipment in that. It’s not safe.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know. That’s why I was exercising on the ball instead.”

Both my brows shot up. “Exercising? Is that what you call sitting on the ball and bouncing while eating candy?”

Her hands went to her hips. “I just finished exercising, and I was taking a break.”

“To eat Twizzlers . . .”

“I bet if you look at the product information on a package of Twizzlers compared to a bottle of Gatorade, it’s not all that different.”

“Gatorade provides hydration and has electrolytes and potassium. Twizzlers are straight-up sugar.”

She scowled at me. “God, you’re so annoying.”

Apparently we were done talking again because she opened the door and walked out without another word.

It looked like shit, but it ran. The mechanic had managed to secure my cracked bumper that had hung down and rubbed against my tire, but the car would need to go into the dealership for bodywork when we got back to the city.

I was just about to merge onto the expressway at the spot where Squirrelgeddon had happened yesterday. Shaking my head at the memory, I asked my passenger, “Is the coast clear? I wouldn’t want a field mouse to run across the road so that I wind up with another ten grand’s worth of damage.”

She glared at me. “Today a field mouse or a squirrel, tomorrow I’ll be reading about your plowing into an old lady crossing the road.”

I hid my smirk. “You have a vivid imagination. Tell me, Charlotte, did you speak to your old boss this way? No wonder you were unemployed.”

I side-glanced and saw her face drop. Shit. I’d been joking around, but it looked like my snide comment had hit a sensitive spot. She stared out the window as she answered.

“My boss at Roth Department Stores was a pig. He deserved way worse than a little teasing.”

I felt a knot tighten in my chest. My eyes flashed to Charlotte and then back to the road. “He harassed you?”

“No. Not really. Not in the way you think, anyway. Although I did catch his secretary bobbing for apples one night under his desk, and it wasn’t even Halloween.”

“You walked in on him getting a blowjob?”

She continued to stare out the window. “Yep.”

“Crap. What did you do?”

She sighed. “I threw my engagement ring in his face.”

It took a few seconds to realize what she’d said. “Your boss was your fiancé?”

“Well, he wasn’t my direct boss. But he was my boss’s boss.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

She shrugged. “Better to find out before the wedding than after.”

That I knew firsthand to be true. “What kind of work did you do before this?”

“I was an assistant buyer at Roth’s in the women’s department. My ex-fiancé is Todd Roth. His family owns the chain.”

“Did you quit, or did the asshole have the nerve to fire you?”

She smiled at my term of endearment. “I quit. I couldn’t work for him and his family after I broke off the engagement. Plus, I honestly never intended to do that type of work to begin with, so it wasn’t like I was working at my dream job anyway. Although in hindsight, I probably should have lined up another job before quitting. I wound up taking crappy temp jobs for months, and it killed me financially.”

“His loss,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “Thanks.”

I wasn’t the best at expressing empathy, even though I could relate to Charlotte’s situation. You don’t just lose a partner; you realize you never had one to begin with. I was relieved when Charlotte’s phone buzzed and diverted her attention. She spent a few minutes typing before speaking again.

“The Wootens have an offer on their Florida property. Neil Capshaw said it’s an all-cash deal with a quick close. I also set you up with a call for Friday morning with Mr. Wooten and moved your appointment with Iris like you requested.”

I glanced at the time on the dashboard. It wasn’t even eleven yet, and she’d gotten everything done even though I’d given her the list of things to do yesterday afternoon right before the accident. “Great. Thank you.”

She put her phone back in her purse. “Are we going straight to the office?”

“I wasn’t planning on it. We should be back in the city by one. I don’t have anything on my calendar until three, so I thought I’d go home to shower and change. But you can take the rest of the afternoon off. Yesterday was a long-enough day.”

“No, I’d rather not take any time off. But thank you for offering. Iris gave me some things to do when I get back, and I want to get started. Although I’d love to run home and shower quickly, too, before heading back in.”

“Okay. I’ll drop you wherever you want and then see you back at the office later.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Would you mind dropping me at my apartment? I’m not too far from the office, but they’re doing midday work on the A train that slows everything down, and I want to get back to the office quickly to get started.”

“Of course. No problem.” Remembering her logic as to why she wouldn’t let me pick her up yesterday morning, I said, “I take it you’re okay with me seeing you naked now?”

Her face pinked up. “What?”

“Relax.” I laughed. “I wasn’t propositioning you. I was using your analogy from the other day when you were okay with me knowing where you lived but not seeing your building.” Although I suppose she’d figuratively shown me herself naked in the last twenty-four hours, too. I knew the details of her breakup, that she was adopted, even some of the things on her crazy Fuck-It List. It troubled me that learning all that made me feel closer to her.

“Oh.” Charlotte laughed and sat back into the passenger’s seat. “Yes, I suppose I’m okay with you seeing me naked now.”

After that, she relaxed for the rest of the ride to the city. I, on the other hand, definitely did not relax, with thoughts running through my mind that Charlotte was okay with me seeing her naked.