Page 31 of The Way I Hate Him
“I bet if you looked closely, the pictured nipples have a wonkiness to them too. That or the ladies facetuned them.”
“Can you facetune a nipple?”
“I think you can facetune anything at this point. Technology is freaky,” she says.
“I guess so, but yeah, lots of nipples.”
“What are you going to do with the nipples? Make them into a collage? Turn them into a puzzle? Oooo, imagine a puzzle of just nipples.”
“I’d do it,” I say.
“I know you would, and you would take it seriously.”
“I would. No matter the picture, every puzzle deserves the same amount of time and attention.”
“You are so . . . perfect,” Maggie says with a laugh. She’s always thought my puzzling was, as she put it, cute. “So what do you do with the pictures?”
“He told me to shred them, but I feel bad just shredding the pictures. These women took their time to pose and print a picture for him, so before I send them down the shredder, I offer the lady in said picture a silent compliment.”
“Stop, no you don’t.” She chuckles.
“I do!” I say. “I tell them how I liked the angle they chose, or wow, good job shaving everything, or lovely piercings.”
“Only you, Hattie.”
“They deserve the praise. It takes guts to send those and worry why you don’t get a response. So a silent praise, I think, is good. But I have to say, a few of them have made me consider a nipple piercing.”
“We’ve gone over this, the minute they clamp your nipple, you’re going to be kicking anyone in sight to get away from you. You could never do it.”
“I know, but these ladies make me dream that I could.”
“Don’t let them convince you.” Maggie laughs.
“I won’t. But anyway, the naked pictures weren’t the weird part.”
“That’s a plot twist. Color me intrigued. What was the weird part?”
“Well, I noticed he didn’t have snacks or any food for that matter. It was eerily weird. Not even a bottle of ketchup. So I told him I needed snacks.”
“Naturally. You can’t function without at least a granola bar in hand. I hope he understood that.”
“He got the hint real quick. He gave me money to go get snacks and asked for some healthy shit, which annoyed me—”
“Like what? Vegetable crudités?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Ugh, that makes me hate him. Try a donut, Hayes. It won’t break the finally stacked abs you’ve created.”
“Tell me about it,” I agree with her. “Anyway, I returned with everything you would expect in my grocery bags. Chips, cookies, candy . . . some fruits and veggies for him. Some of those pretzel peanut butter things I love and my coveted pickles.”
“The ones that you and Cassidy would snack on every summer?”
“The exact ones.” Maggie gets it. She knows all about my pickle obsession with Cassidy. One summer, when she came to visit, Maggie was drawn into the pickle eating. She went home with a few jars. “I was so happy to see them that I nearly cried in the store. So I bought them, obviously, brought them back to his place, and when I was trying to open them, I dropped them.”
“Nooo,” she replies in distress. “Not the pickles.”
“Yup,” I say. “And guess who has concrete floors?”
