Dear Love, I Hate You (Easton High)

Xavier: You should be careful who you send these to.

I dated the girl for a year. She can rest easy knowing I’d never do anything with her nudes, but there are guys at Easton who’d make that shit viral in a heartbeat.

My phone pings once.

Brie: Is it another girl?

Twice.

Brie: Xavier?

Then comes the threat.

Brie: Mark my words, if you’re fucking someone else, I don’t care who she is, I’ll rip her apart.

Annd that’s enough of that.

I don’t give her tantrum another thought and toss my phone into my open gym bag. I catch a whiff of sweat as I stroll toward my house. Jesus, is that me? I really need to hit the shower before detention. Practice was brutal.

Hank’s car sits in the driveway.

So does my dad’s.

I almost forgot. Tonight’s poker night. Poker Tuesdays are practically a ritual around here. Finn and I might be good friends, but our dads? They’re as tight as you can get without being blood related. What’s that saying again? You can choose your friends but not your family?

My friendship with Finley Richards wasn’t as much of a choice as it was fate. Thanks to our old men, we grew up together, played ball together, went to school together. What else was there for us to do except follow our dads’ lead and become ride or dies?

I spot the white roses scattered across the countertops the second I enter the kitchen. There’s a card tucked inside one of the bouquets. I make my way over to snatch the piece of paper.

For Delilah,

Here’s to twenty-years together.

I love you more than life itself.

- Ray

My eyes sweep over the note and my father’s clumsy handwriting. Right, tomorrow is my parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary. Dad prides himself in organizing something special for Mom to come home to every year, but he really overdid it this time. There’s got to be at least twenty bouquets in here.

Let me guess, twenty bouquets for twenty years together?

Please excuse me while I hurl.

He cares so much it makes me sick. It’d be so much easier if he didn’t take her on romantic getaways. So much easier if he didn’t do every fucking thing imaginable to keep the spark alive. If he didn’t love her, I’d have no problem shitting on their parade. No issue watching their marriage go up in flames.

r /> Just say the word and I’ll bring the matches.

Fine, I’m a coward. I talk a big game, but I’m too much of a pussy to tell him. Either way, it’s my mom’s mess to clean up. Only she can be the one to confess what she did.

What she’s been doing for years now. Maybe if it’d just happened once with some rando, maybe my dad could find it in himself to forgive her.

But she made her bed when she chose him.

Footsteps echo down the hall, and I swivel to see my dad pad into the kitchen with Hank on his tail. They’re probably on their way out to meet a few other guys for poker night.

“Why aren’t you at practice?” my dad asks.

Hi to you, too, Father.