Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel) (15 page)

“I don’t want him to be my best friend,” I said. “I want him to be my boyfriend.”

“Tell me,” Lucia said and stared at the email, “how many times have you two had sex?”

“Uh, twice?” I said and looked away from her.

“Only twice? That seems odd. Don’t be uncomfortable.”

“Oh, I mean, we had sex several times over two days.”

“Yes,” she said and smiled. “I thought so. And did you orgasm?”

“Um,” I said and scratched my head, “well, yes.”

“Yes, of course. No, I don’t think you should dump him outright. I sent you a friend request, by the way,” Lucia said and closed the cover on her iPad.

“Okay,” I said, “but how can I stop this obsession? India’s right, it’s torture.”

“Well, you must occupy your mind. Do you craft?”

“Uh, no,” I said.

“Well, you simply must craft. Tomorrow we’re making stained glass dream catchers in the garden. You must join us. Very therapeutic.”

“Lucia,” India said, “I believe we’re doing the city tomorrow, right, Beth? Beth is only here for two days.”

“Two
days
?” Lucia said and shook her head. “My goodness, our guests usually stay for at least two weeks.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I, uh, lost my job.”

“No,” Lucia said, “you did not lose your job, dear one. You simply did not need it any longer.”

She sat up on the bed and hugged me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It will get better, Beth,” she said as she stroked my hair and rocked me.

It was everything I could do not to cry as she held me.

“His silence breaks my fucking heart,” I said and sniffled.

Lucia released me and brushed a piece of hair away from my forehead.

“Yes, sweet girl,” she said as she stared into my eyes, “you are an empath. You would never do this to anyone, would you?”

“Never,” I said and shook my head. “Never ever.

At ten o’clock, India and I put on the antique dresses and made our way down the Hallway of Failed Relationships toward the dining room. One of the trotting maids handed us black masks that we had to put on before we entered the room.

Lucia ran up to us as we entered and brought us over to a handsome man sitting in the corner dressed in a white button-down shirt and black pants playing an acoustic guitar.

“This is our Gypsy guitar player,” she said.

He stopped playing and looked at me and smiled as he extended his hand.

“Hi,” I said as I held his hand. “I love Gogol Bordello. Do you like them?”

He looked at me and shook his head and looked at Lucia.

“Oh, no, Beth. Pacho is a real Gypsy, you know,
Roma
? He escaped Romania last month. Poor dear,” she said and sighed, “he was literally walking down the side of the road. You think you’ll only ever read about this stuff, don’t you?”

“Yes, you do,” I said and looked at Pacho. “I’m sorry.”

“Anyway, we’re nursing him. Let’s get you to your seats.”

Lucia led India and I to our place cards and put her hand on the shoulder of a handsome older man dressed in red silk pajamas.

“Beth, this is a delight for you! You are sitting next to none other than the infamous artist, Tommy Holderfield. Tommy, this is Beth, a friend of India’s from the far-off land of West Virginia!”

“Hello,” he said and stood from the table and shook my hand. “Do you know my work?”

“Um, I-I’m sure I would if I-”

“Dicks!” a man in a gold robe, sitting across from Tommy said.

“Sorry?” I said.

“Ignore, my dear,” Tommy said and pulled my chair out. “The sourpuss with the foul mouth is my lover, Mikey Everheart.”

“Please to meet you, Mikey. Thank you,” I said to one of the maids as she filled a huge goblet in front of me with red wine.

“Beth,
organic
,” Lucia said and pointed at my glass. “Tannin-free, manually pressed, hybrid grapes from a practically uninhabited rainforest in Brazil. You can’t even find it on the map. You could try, but you wouldn’t.”

“I’m sure it’s delicious,” I said and took a sip of the strong-tasting wine as I noticed everyone at the table staring at me.

“Well?” Tommy said.

“Yummy,” I said and looked at the other guests as they smiled.

Althea stood from the table and grabbed two wreaths of flowers and walked around to me and India and placed the wreaths on our heads.

“Hand-picked, unpreserved, perennial Montauk wildflowers set upon slow-whittled birch branches with raw hemp twine,” she said into my ear. “You’re not allergic, are you?”

“No,” I said. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

I looked at India and she winked at me as she grabbed two bottles of beer off a tray one of the trotters held and put them in front of our plates.

“Get drunk,” she said into my ear, “makes it all the more bearable.”

I smiled as I scanned the huge table, covered in food and my stomach growled.

“I hope you don’t mind Paleo,” India said and grabbed an artichoke leaf.

“No, love it,” I said as I watched India’s 2-year-old sister Sahara crawl across the dining room table in a cloth diaper covered in heart patches.

Tommy chatted to Althea’s boyfriend Charlie on the other side of him as Mikey stared at me across the table squinting.

“Are you an artist too, Mikey?” I said and grabbed a chunk of cheese off a silver tray and looked around for a plate.

“Beth,” Lucia said, “that cheese is unpasteurized, dandelion-fed sheep’s milk, sun-cured, ochre provolone from a teeny-tiny town near Corsica.”

“Looks delicious,” I said. “Are there plates?”

Lucia looked at me and frowned.

“Oh, no, dear one, we don’t use plates. We only ever eat communally,” Lucia said.

“I am a performance artist, Jess,” Mikey said as he poured himself another glass of wine.

“Oh, yeah,” Tommy said as he rolled his eyes, “this one over here thinks he’s Frank Zappa.”

I looked across at Mikey and he held the bottle of wine as if he was going to throw it at Tommy.

“That’s right, Jess,” Mikey said, “and this one made his fortune in dicks.”

“Jess?” India said. “Her name is Beth.”

“I thought it was Jess too,” Charlie said as he looked down the table at me.

“She looks more like a Jess than a Beth,” Tyson, a small Asian man from Berlin said.

“No,” I said and looked at Mikey, “it’s Beth. So, you said Tommy makes his fortune in...”

“Yes,” Tommy said and sighed, “Mikey said dicks. However, it’s not so crass. I make phallic art, specifically, I recreate the religious totems dedicated to the phallus from the Roman era. I really want to start with the Yoni stamping, but this one is so jealous.”

“Yoni? I don’t know what that--” I said.

“Vagina!” Mikey said.

“Do you have Tourette’s all of a sudden?” Tommy said. “Yes, Jess, the Yoni are totems and sculpture representative of the vagina. Most of the prints are stamped with impressions of actual vaginas. Are you interested in art?”

“Yes, I love art. I’m not familiar with what you are talking about, but I do love art,” I said and knocked back some of the beer.

Mikey stared at me and put his hand to the side of his mouth.

“Tommy is asking you if he can use your vajayjay as a stamp, Jess.”

“Oh, ah, no, I don’t think that would be...good,” I said.

We ate fig tartlets drizzled with cold-pressed, unfiltered maple syrup; persimmon and quail egg quiche in a crust made with flax and chia seeds; mango, kale and cranberry parfaits; raw green beans pressed in cashew butter and dusted with Mediterranean, air-dried, crumbled tofu; coconut milk and avocado custard with a unrefined, hand-extracted, blackstrap molasses brûlée and purple squash and lychee soufflé with a pink salt, organic ghee and elephant garlic crème fraîche. There were cases of gluten-free beer and tannin-free wine. And more beer and wine.

Althea looked across the table at me and asked me to sing a song with Pacho, the Gypsy guitar player.

“I don’t sing,” I said.

“Are you sure?” she said and looked at me as if I had lychee and chia seeds all over my face. “No, it can’t be! Tyson, doesn’t Beth’s face tell us she can carry a tune?”

Tyson pushed the blood orange, tangerine and watercress pie to the side and crawled up on his chair and knelt on the table beside Sahara. He reached across the table and put his hands on my forehead.

“Jess, it feels like you can carry a tune,” he said as he massaged my forehead. “Are you sure?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Tyson,” India said, “I’ve already told everyone that her name is
Beth
, not Jess.”

Tyson stared into my eyes.

“Althea, Jess is right, it’s not music you’re picking up on, it’s macramé,” Tyson said and smiled. “Aren’t I correct, sweetheart?”

“What do you make?” Althea said, “Plant holders? No! Dream catchers...hammocks?”

“I don’t craft,” I said as I slugged back a glass of tannin-free, ice-pressed, organic Icelandic wine.

“Shame,” Tyson said and crawled back across the table to his chair. “You should make some fig preserves with us tomorrow. Mikey and Tommy brought all of these figs. What are we possibly going to do with all of these figs?”

“I’ve always said that the fig looks most like a vagina,” Tommy said to me.

He held a fig up in front of my face and then pressed it against my nose.

Sahara crawled up and snatched the fig out of Tommy’s hand and shoved it into her mouth.

“Lucia, Sahara has a whole fig in her mouth. Won’t she choke?” I said.

Lucia sat in Adolfo’s lap right next to Baron Richter and she stood and looked at Sahara for a moment and smiled.

“No, she’s fine,” she said as she sat back down on Adolfo. “We’ve raised Sahara to be an intuitive eater. She refuses to put anything into her mouth that she may choke on.”

“Wish I could say the same thing for Tommy the Gay Blade,” Mikey said and scoffed. “Isn’t that right, boo? Lord knows you’re always putting things in your mouth you choke on.”

Tommy drank an entire glass of wine in two gulps and pointed across the table at Mikey.

“Is that a crack about my weight or about my love for penis that is
not
yours?”

“Well,” Mikey said and narrowed his eyes at Tommy, “if the crack fits, fuck it!”

Mikey reached over and grabbed a bottle of beer out of Althea’s hand and drank it down.

“You’re drunk!” Tommy said and picked up Charlie’s glass of wine and flung the wine into Mikey’s face.

“You, bitch!” Mikey said and rubbed the wine into his face with his hands. “You know, every time I look at your weird eyebrows, frozen with Botox more times that I can count, and your stretched-out face, I want to rip my fucking jugular vein out with a meat hook!”

“Whoa,” I said and looked at India who rolled her eyes.

“What do you mean
stretched
?” Tommy said and folded his arms across his chest.

“Just what I said,” Mikey said and leaned forward in his chair. “Your face is so stretched it looks like the Octomom’s vag!”

“Well, I will spare our dinner companions the description of your ass, speaking of stretched!” Tommy said and slammed a bottle of beer on the table.

“I’ve been nothing but loyal to you, you douche!” Mikey said and pouted as he poured himself another glass of beer.

“Loyal
?” Tommy said as he hit me on the arm and turned to me. “This one has had more dicks in him than Truman Capote did at Halston’s birthday party at 54 in ‘78.”

“I-I have no idea what that means,” I said as I shook my head and looked at Lucia.

“Look who’s talking, Mr. Dick-In-The-Box,” Mikey said and scoffed as he pointed at me. “Don’t you dare think I’m so drunk I don’t notice you sniffing around this little hot thing!”

“Me...hot?” I said and adjusted my flower crown. “Thank you, I’m flattered. Really.”

Tommy looked at me and shook his head.

“Puhleeze
! I banged Cindy Crawford back in the day!”

I grabbed an open bottle of wine off the table and drank out of it.

“I knew it!” Mikey said and stood. “You are a beast who has done nothing but emotionally abuse me for twenty-two years. Well, no more, ass clown! Tonight is the night! I’m cutting my dick off!”

Mikey grabbed the cheese knife out of the unpasteurized, dandelion-fed sheep’s milk, sun-cured, ochre provolone from a teeny-tiny town near Corsica and held it to his waist.

I looked at India and pressed my lips to her ear.

“I’m drunk,” I said. “Is this guy really going to cut his penis off at the table?”

“He threatens it at every single dinner. This is the furthest he’s gone though. Maybe tonight is really the night?” she said and shrugged as she grabbed another bottle of beer.