Page 104 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

A short pause. Then, “Yes.”

“My maaaan,” Adrien laughed, his fist popping into the frame, making Dominic grin ear to ear.

Sauce splattered everywhere when Rosie smacked my brother’s wrist with her spatula. “We do not encourage violence in this house. Now, turn that thing off!”

“But he deserved it!” Dominic argued as Rosie snatched the camera from Adrien and switched it off.

I was mesmerized, my mouth hanging open as I watched us grow a little bit older, taller with every other video. I’d forgotten about his skateboard phase. And the buzz cut. The big, watery grin he’d worn on his sixteenth birthday when he finally got the keys to his dad’s beat-up red Camry.

My chest caved in on itself as a buried memory resurfaced.

We’d snuck down to the lake with a stolen bottle of Gampy’s whiskey that night, sitting by the water and talking until well past curfew. He’d wiped his eyes with the collar of his polo at one point and told me about the anger he still felt regarding his dad’s death. He said he wasn’t sure why it was there or if it would ever go away.

He wanted someone to blame, even though no one was at fault. He’d had a heart attack at work, and everyone—his colleagues, the EMTs, nurses, and doctors—had done everything they could. But sometimes, everything just wasn’t enough.

Three weeks later, Rosie found out she was pregnant.

She always said Dominic was her one perfect miracle—a gift from her late husband, assuring her that everything was going to be okay, even though he’d been forced to leave her so much earlier than they’d agreed on.

I’d cried with him that night, my own biting anger flaring on his behalf.

It was surreal, being confronted with these softer moments I’d worked so hard to suppress—the ones just between us, because remembering them was too excruciating. It was easier to lie to myself and pretend like we’d always been all claws and teeth.

Almost every clip triggered at least one forgotten memory. Some of them were tangible enough to flash through my mind’s eye; others I could only feel in my heart.

Then, it happened.

It was the pattern shift that pulled me from the hypnotic state I’d slipped into. My train of thought came to a halt the second Jaxton Kim’s shit-eating grin appeared on the shaky screen. My stomach dropped.

He was out of breath, jogging down our old school hallway from what I could gather. “We got it,” he whisper-yelled, fumbling with his phone to switch out of selfie mode. “We got it—it’s not her birthday. It’s 8108.”

After an excessive amount of rustling and hushed whispers, the camera finally stopped pointing at the floor.

“You saw it here first, folks!” Arjan said, gesturing at a set of lockers behind him, where Jaxton and Dominic were fumbling with a silver lock. My silver lock. That was my old locker. 8108 was my old combination. “Dominic’s balls have finally dropped.”

Dominic sniped a pen at Arjan’s head, inspiring a round of laughter from the five teenagers gathered around him, all of whom I recognized as members of the senior boys’ soccer team.

Arjan wasn’t deterred. “For all you viewers at home, Dom’s been pining for this chick since he was, what, eight?”

Dominic ignored the question, too busy fussing with the small pile of items he’d slipped into my locker. He angled the roses an inch to the right, two to the left, then stepped back.

One frustrated huff later, he’d picked it back up and started the process over.

“Dude, it’s fine where it is. Leave it—are y’all seeing this shit?” Jaxton said to the camera as he pointed an index finger at Dominic. “Alice, you seeing this?”

My pulse jumped, a cavity forming in my chest as Dom fiddled with the arrangement again. His fingers were trembling.

So much so that not only did the camera manage to capture it, but their unsteadiness snagged my full, breathless attention.

“Man, stop fussing. Bell’s about to go off, it’s fine—” The footage cut off as Arjan turned to pry Dominic away.

I couldn’t breathe.

My head was spinning, shadows creeping over the corners of my vision.

“It wasn’t a prank.”

I turned to him, my heart swooping, falling, flying.