Hide Your Fires

18: Gross

"Tell your friend to stop leaving crap on our porch," I tell Matthew on Saturday as I'm sitting on the couch with my sketchbook as he plays Candy Land with Jude on the floor in front of me.

"What are you talking about?" He wonders curiously, glancing up at me.

"I just saw him out there!" I exclaim, motioning toward the window where I'd just seen somebody on our porch but nobody rang the doorbell or anything. After the rose on Thursday, there was a box of chocolates out there yesterday when I got home from work, and today, I bet he'll continue with his stupid Valentine's theme. Perhaps a teddy bear. "Three days in a row. Really."

"Just talk to him," Matt suggests. "Tell him to stop if it bothers you."

"No, don't make him stop," Jude whines looking up at me as he itches at the top of his cast. "But, just ask him to make it Skittles next time instead of chocolate."

I sigh and stand up from the couch. "I'm not making him buy you Skittles, Jude," I tell him as I swing open the door just as Tate is getting in his car at the curb in front of the house. When he sees the door opening, he perks up and looks over at me.

"Hey," He greets me. "I, uh, thought that you were at work."

"Stop this," I say, looking down at the porch where I saw a stuffed koala with an "I'm sorry" card in his paws. I was close with the teddy bear theory but of course, Tate had to make it weird with a koala. "I'm so busy right now and I don't have time with you polluting my porch."

"Yeah, Matthew told me about the fashion show thing. Congratulations on that," He says, walking back toward the porch. I notice that Matt looks away from me when I turn to glare at him from where I'm standing on the threshold of the front door. "I'm really happy for you, Hallie."

I roll my eyes at him, not even feeling the slightest bit of remorse for how sad he looks right now because I bet it's just an act. Everything is an act when it comes to Tate, I've realized. I then decide to be extra cruel to him in hopes of making him go away forever by picking up the adorable tiny koala and I throw it in his direction so that it lands at his feet. "Leave me and my house alone."

"Hallie, I'm just trying to talk to you," He says with a pleading look. A huge contrast to the emotionless scowl on his face when he had humiliated that girl in the hallway like it was nothing.

"Well, I don't want to talk to you," I fire at him irritatedly. "I don't believe a word that comes out of your mouth anymore because all you did when I did talk to you was just lie. You told me what I wanted to hear just so that I could become another one of your disgusting conquests, no matter who you hurt."

"That's not true."

"Why should I believe that?" I wonder with raised eyebrows. "Give me one good reason."

"Because I like you," He admits and I hate that it takes the breath out of my lungs because I'm still not convinced that he's telling the truth, I just kinda wish that he was. How would I ever know with him though? "You're different from all of the other girls that I've been with."

I let out a loud snort at that cliché declaration. "That's the best that you can do?"

"I don't know what to say," He defends. "I want to show you that I'm not lying but I don't know how to do that. I mean, yes, I know that I'm kind of a shitty person for how I treated that girl and how I've treated a bunch of other girls before her, but-"

"What was her name?" I ask him.

"What?" Tate looks confused at the question.

"What's her name? The girl in the hallway. If you can tell me her name, I'll go to lunch with you tomorrow and we'll talk," I offer him although I'm pretty sure that he doesn't know her name at all. He'd called her Kaitlin in the hallway and her name is Kathy although, I guess, that could have been an act just to further humiliate the poor girl.