The Year I Hated You

chapter 1 - The Resolution

IT is 3:58 am, January 1st, 2021, and I, Josette Lawson am lying flat on my back in bed, two trains of thought simultaneously barreling down the tracks of my mind. I flip over to the left side of my body, letting the imaginary roar of a locomotive focus my brain on the first thought I've had: How ridiculous it is that every book on the shelf across from my bed has a happy ending.

The tangent to that thought is how equally ridiculous it is that I hand-picked each one of those books for the sole purpose of their happy endings.

I shake my head, chiding myself, remembering all the times I stood in the middle of the bookstore on Warren Street, pacing between the stacks with the same book I'd picked up half an hour before in the romance section. I know what I will do. The twitch in my fingers is almost subconscious by now. The need incessant. I convince myself that I have to flip to the last page, I must know: Does it all turn out for the better?

Does the girl get the fairy tale romance? Does the chosen one find themselves and their world pieced back together with a rose-colored stitch? Is all that yearning the boy did worth a forever of requited love from that girl who had always been better than him? I can't waste time with maybes and ifs and to-be-continueds in the next five books. I need the happy ending...now.

Why? Put simply, I don't think I can handle the alternative. I had seen enough unhappy endings shatter against the glass reality of my world in the last year, and, for me, reading a sappy Happily Ever After felt like pulling the blinds shut.

I flip to my right side, again, then turn my satin-covered pillow over with a loud sigh. My skin feels like it's on fire, and I would do anything to cool that itching feeling crawling up my neck and through my temples. An annoying scratch right to my brain (and I hate to admit it, but to my heart, too) that burns whenever I encounter that second train of thought: Finneas Stratton is the biggest asshole I've ever met.

And unlike every enemies-to-lovers sitting on my bookshelves right now, Happily Ever After is not in Finn and I's future, especially not after tonight. For the first time in the past eight years, I think I might be okay with that. 

Our hate affair started long ago, though, at the time, I would've thought we'd eventually become friends. For the last twenty years, Finn and I have watched each other from a distance, less than a hundred feet of front lawn and side street between us at any given time.

My family, the Lawson's, live in the same suburb of Hartford, Connecticut as the Strattons. A quaint (and by that I mean obscenely rich) little (huge) neighborhood that houses the highest pedigree of politicians, doctors, and lawyers the Tri-State has to offer.

My parents come from a long line of cardiovascular surgeons, while Mr. And Mrs. Stratton pledged themselves to a life of public service. Fin's dad got his start as an eccentric, yet wildly popular, political commentator on CNBC, and his mom began her bid for Governor the summer we turned three. That was the summer I met Finneas.

As my mother tells it, Tina Stratton was the dark horse of local politics, and that was being kind. Desperate to spread her namesake alongside the Republican gospel that was already long established in our community, Tina showed up on our front step, hand in hand with little Finneas with the funniest idea that we could all become friends.

We spent the afternoon a safe six feet away from each other. One of us becoming occasionally brave enough to take a step in the direction of the other and then scramble back into the lap of our mother. I think, naturally, the cold-blooded snake in Finneas repulsed the good-natured humanitarian genes in myself. Finally, a mutual tantrum thrown during snack time was the nail in the coffin for our budding relationship.