13. Hate

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Chapter - 13

LOVE IS... HATE

“They don't know what love is. Here they learn what hate is, and I am so sad that they might never know love because hate came first.” 
― A.S. King, Everybody Sees the Ants

Day - 5

"Tiffany Rogers - twenty-five years old. A dietitian by profession, she loves to stay fit and works to achieve a healthy environment around her. Her hobbies include swimming and horse riding. Her favorite book is-"

"Let's come straight to the point," Ashton interrupted me and continued, "What's her figure?"

I looked up from my phone only to scowl at him. He looked happy with my reaction as he smirked and got more comfortable on the bench on which we were currently sitting. "I don't know and please just shut up," I begged him.

He ignored my pleading and commented, "I like curvy." I rolled my eyes at him and focused back on my phone as I read the other details of our next candidate, Tiffany, for whom we were waiting at seven in the morning in this park. "Like you," Ashton added, making me snap my head In his direction.

"Pervert." I glared at him.

"Ms.Uptight." Was his comeback with a very smug smirk on his bearded handsome face. I chose to ignore him till Tiffany decided to grace us with her presence, as my reactions were probably tempting him to irritate me more.

"Who keeps a f*cking date at seven in the morning on a Friday?" he asked incredulously.

I wanted to say 'I know, right!' But decided against voicing out my opinion in front of him. He had already irritated me to extreme levels in the past half an hour, since we left his apartment till now. One of the reasons of both of ours grumpy behaviour was definitely coming to this park so early. I had to wake up at thirty minutes past five to take a bath, get ready and reach Ashton's apartment by thirty minutes past six. My tasks didn't end there as I had to do a strenuous task of waking Ashton up so early. For the last few days he had been highly pissed off at me as I used to wake him up around eleven in the morning. Imagine his reaction after waking up at six thirty. Now he was taking out all his frustration by making all kinds of perverted jokes on me and thereby, irritating me.

My silence made him ask me further, "Why the f*ck are you wearing formals in a park?" I looked down at my beige pants and light blue shirt with a frown. It was all Tiffany's fault. Who in their right minds keep a date meeting in a park at seven in the morning? Ashton hadn't even taken a bath. He wore a pair of tracks with a plain black t-shirt. Still, he looked hot. I, on the other hand, was truly defining 'uptight' in this morning walk park.

"I didn't know we were going to have a meeting in a park. I thought we were going somewhere for breakfast," I justified myself, finally breaking my silence.

He snickered at me and said, "I actually can't imagine you in a lingerie." With this comment, my resolve of ignoring him came back with full force. Noticing my silence, he added, "I can imagine you in your birthday suit, though." That was the cue for my cheeks to turn red but I willed myself to not give any satisfaction to him by giving away my embarrassment. He was doing this on purpose. "Are you a virgin?" he asked innocently, making me gape at him in shock.

"You are an idiot," I hissed with red cheeks. "Just shut up and don't talk to me." He was happy with my outburst, obviously. He smirked his devilish smirk and rested his hands behind his head, looking at me with a content sigh.

I scowled at him and grumbled, "I hate you." I didn't mean it even a bit. Hate and love are two words that are very passionate, according to me. The opposites I didn't use very often. Of course, I didn't hate Ashton.

His smirk faltered a bit for a split second and it took form of a bitter smile. With dead serious eyes, he mumbled, "That's a lot better than loving me."

There was something in the way he said this that made me pause and just stare at him for a while. I stared at him with curiosities that had started taking birth in me since the day before, after his mother's phone call.

What was the reason behind his bitterness? Why was he the way he was?

"What's the matter, Ashton?" I asked, not letting my curiosity stay within me.

His jaw clenched a bit and just as he opened his mouth to most probably order me to just shut up and mind my own business, Tiffany reached us and greeted, "Hi, Ashton. Hi, Liana."

"Hey," I mumbled as I took in her appearance. Her shoulder length black hair was left loose as they contrasted her flawless fair skin perfectly. For a moment, I pondered over asking her the secrets of her spotless skin as a fresh new pimple had graced my right cheek just this morning. Her brown eyes were sparkling with happiness, showing that she was clearly a morning person, unlike Ashton. Her shorts and tank top gave away that she was here for morning walk and not for a date, which was kind of weird.

Ashton chose to not reply to her, which made me pinch his arm slightly. "What?" he frowned at me.

I shot him a glare, ignoring his question. "Should I leave the two of you to talk?" I asked, looking between them with a smile.

Just as Tiffany opened her mouth to reply, Ashton beat her to it and declared, "No." My eyebrows shot up in slight surprise, and Tiffany, too, looked a bit surprised at his reaction. "So, Tiffany it is, right?" he asked, causing me glare at him some more.

'Why, God, why? Why is he such a rude moron?'

"Idiot," I hissed lightly, so only he could hear.

Tiffany, on the other hand, chuckled a bit and replied, "Yeah."

He smirked a bit and asked, "What do you do?"

"I'm a dietitian." She smiled.

"Cool." He shrugged and sat down on the bench, without asking her to sit. He was so not a gentleman. Noticing the nth glare I shot towards him in less than an hour, he asked me with a frown, "What?"

Ignoring him, I looked back at Tiffany and smiled a bit. "Please sit down."

She chuckled back and sat down beside Ashton, leaving considerable distance between them. I, too, sat down on the other side of Ashton.

"What about you?" she asked him, tilting her head slightly. "What do you do?"

In response, he shrugged and said, "Nothing."

A grimace formed on my lips. True that he did nothing but couldn't he give a tad bit normal reply, something like, I'm planning to join my family business or I'm thinking of a new setup. There was no dearth of a creative yet respectable answer of this question.

"Oh." Tiffany frowned and continued, "I've read about you in newspapers. It has been a few years since you came out of the prison. For what were you charged?"

Ashton stiffened beside me, and I stared at the side of his head in shock and curiosity. I wasn't aware of this bizarre rumor. He didn't reply, which made Tiffany say further, "I also read about your drug intake. It's good that you have left it."

My mouth fell open at whatever things she was saying. Was she out of her mind? These are not the kind of things you should talk about on a first date. These are immensely personal questions, whose answers you should expect to get only and only if you are very, very close to the concerned person.

Ashton didn't look affected as he smirked and asked, "Who said I have left?"

Tiffany gasped at his reply amd so did I. I knew that he was doing this on purpose. He was just trying to wind her up. I was way too familiar with his smirk; his wicked, stupid smirk.

I wasn't aware of his past, his past drug addiction or his imprisonment. I didn't even know if any this was true or just a fragment of many of the rumors that go around in social circuit. But, I knew that he didn't take drugs now. He hadn't taken in front of me in last few days. It's a completely different matter that he looked high and handsome most of the time. But he was not n addict.

'Where did 'handsome' come from?' my inner sane voice snapped at me.

A frown covered my face as I, mentally, blamed my weirdness to my empty stomach. Leaving the possible couple and the awkwardness around them, I focused on the potato chips packet and canned fruit juice in my bag. The voice of opening the packet, made both of them look in my direction. Ashton extended his hand and took a chip out of the packet to feed himself.

"No!" Tiffany exclaimed. Ashton and I looked at her startled. When she knew she had our attention, she continued, "Why are you eating this in breakfast?" Do you have any idea how unhealthy it is and how many calories it has?" She shuddered, probably calculating the amount of calories in had in my hands at the moment.

I just kept staring at her in surprise of her outburst, while Ashton had other plans in mind. He snatched the packet from my hand and asked in shock, "What?"

Was Tiffany's health freak dietitian side rubbing on him so quickly?

Just as I thought he would throw away the chips in the nearby dustbin and save me from the calorie attack, he did something entirely different. He dived into the packet and ate all of its contents in a span of hardly two minutes, much to Tiffany's horror and my amusement. He ate like he hadn't eaten in ages. A gasp escaped Tiffany's mouth when he snatched the canned juice and drank it one go. Not only that, he let out a huge burp at the end which made Tiffany flinch and me laugh at his antics. He was doing this to wind her up and going by her reactions, he was succeeding.

"Delicious." He smirked at the end as he looked at Tiffany, who was now covering her mouth with her hands in disbelief. "Do you have some more of those?" he asked me and I shook my head while laughing at him.

"You need to take two rounds of this park to burn the amount of calories you just took," Tiffany announced with no trace of humor in her voice or features.

That just caused me to laugh louder but I quickly converted it into a cough sprint on Ashton's glare.

"F*ck yeah." He snorted.

"Oh yeah," she replied as she stood up and rested her hands on her hips, staring down at Ashton. "Lets do this.Two rounds. Now."

Both of us stared at her in shock as she resembled an army general giving training to a fresh batch. She was very serious and looked a bit devious as she stared down at us with a huge smile on her face. To add to our horror, she started jumping on her spot, look way too excited at the prospect of making Ashton run.

"What the f*ck is wrong with her?" Ashton asked in a low shocked voice.

"I really have no idea," I replied, keeping my eyes fixed on her jumping form.

"C'mon, get up!" She slapped Ashton's shoulder in enthusiasm. He got up and stared at her incredulously. "Let's run," she yelled, all too happy. He flinched at her loudness.

"Yes," he yelled back in fake enthusiasm, making me laugh. Happy with his participation, she grinned and started running.

He looked at me wide eyes and asked, "Where the hell did you get her from?" In reply, I laughed at his expressions and the weirdness of the entire situation. But my laughter vanished into thin air when he announced, "I'm not in this alone. You are running with me."

"What? No!" I exclaimed in complete shock.

He smirked and said, "Yes, Ana."

"Don't call me that," I snapped at him.

He ignored me and called Tiffany. "Shouldn't Liana run with us to stay healthy and fit?"

As expected, she seemed happy with that prospect as she excitedly agreed and came back to us, so we could run with her.

"No way!" I objected, shooting death glare towards Ashton.

"Yes way." He grinned back and before I could object again, he held my wrist and pulled me to stand up. Without giving me a chance to say anything at all, he started dragging me with him to jog aling wiyh Tiffany.

People around us were giving us really odd stares. I mean, who wouldn't after looking at a health freak Tiffany jogging in her jogging attire like a girl high on sugar along with the gorgeous Ashton who was dragging with himself a girl who was shouting profanities at him. I realized that being dragged was doing nothing but gaining a lot more attention to us, so I, too, started jogging with them normally. But that gained me a lot more odd stares and laughter from the people in the park.

It's not every day that you spot a twenty five year old, young lady jogging in a park at seven in the morning in office formals compromising of beige pants, light blue shirt and nude colored sandals.

I was the perfect picture of bizarre in that park and I stopped running as soon as I spotted a teenager clicking a picture of me or most probably making a video of me running like that. Ashton was clearly enjoying every bit of this meeting and I, on the other hand, was dreading every bit of it.

I sat down on the nearby bench, huffing for fresh air as I glared at Ashton as he stopped running as well only to laugh at me. "Shut up and run," I told him off and rested on the bench.

"As you say, Ms. Uptight." He bowed a bit in good humor and continued jogging with Tiffany.

I waited for them on that bench for the next half an hour or so as they kept coming in my view of the jogging track. They seemed to be talking in between and I considered that as a good point of this meeting. At least he was talking to someone.

"Where is she?" I asked him, with a frown when he came towards me alone.

"I don't know." He shrugged and sat down beside me, breathing slightly heavily due to continuous running.

"What do you mean? What did you do?" I asked in panic with wide eyes.

He smirked at me and replied, "Just made sure that we won't have a second meeting with her."

My mouth fell open and I asked him after a moment, "So the conclusion is that you didn't like her?"

He looked at me incredulously. "What made you think that I liked her?"

I shrugged helplessly and responded, "You were talking to her as opposed to the first two girls we had met."

He rolled his eyes at me and stood up. He started stretching his body and for half of that time, all I did was stare at his amazingly flexing arm muscles. And for the remaining time, I cursed myself for being an idiot and finding this devil good looking.

"I'm hungry," he announced.

I jumped from the bench and grinned at him. "Me too."

He rolled his eyes at me, again and turned his back to me. "Let's have some breakfast then," he said as he started moving out of the park and I, happily, followed him.

***********

Fifteen minutes later, Ashton had parked outside a little restaurant and I had very happily skipped into it. The lady at the counter was probably in her mid thirties and she looked really very welcoming with that warm smile on her face.

"Are you a regular here?" I asked him once we sat down at a corner table that had the view of the street through the French windows in the restaurant.

"I come here very often but it's my first time here for breakfast." He shrugged, keeping him arm on the table between us.

I waved my hand in dismissal and told him, "That's understandable. You never wake up at the time of breakfast." He chuckled and nodded.

"I'll be back," he said and got up from the seat. He went towards the counter and started talking to the lady, who seemed surprised after seeing him. His back was towards me but I could figure him out giving orders for us. For a second, I worried about what he would order for me as he had not asked about my choice but then I shrugged it off.

He came back five minutes later with a plate full of bacon and and two cups of coffee with it. Obviously my mood reached heights upon seeing a cup of coffee for me.

"Any kind of addiction is bad," he commented as he kept the tray on the table between us and sat down opposite me.

With a laugh, I shrugged and decided not to waste any more time in talking. Hastily, I picked up my cup of coffee and carefully took a sip of it.

"You won't come tomorrow, right?" he asked, taking a bite of bacon.

"Why won't I?" I asked in confusion.

"Your cousin's wedding... it's tomorrow. Isn't it?"

"Oh yes! I keep forgetting about that."

"Dumb," he mumbled under his breath.

I gasped and told him, "I heard that."

Mockingly, he widened his eyes and gasped. "My bad."

"Did you really not like Tiffany?" I asked after a few minutes.

He rolled his eyes and said, "Not at all."

"But she was pretty," I offended her.

"And a psycho," he added.

"Being healthy is good," I commented.

"Too much of anything is bad."

"You are way too lazy," I pointed out with a little smirk which caused him to look at me dead panned. "Maybe after spending some time together, you both would start affecting each other which would make you a little less lazy and her a little less of a health freak," I told him with a little hope even though I, myself, didn't like her that much.

"I really don't want a walking calories calculator with me all the time. There are applications for that." He snorted.

With a chuckle, I got back to devouring the taste of bacon and decided to cut Tiffany's name off the list as well. Once we were done, Ashton excused himself. "I'll b back in a minute. Have to use the restroom."

I waited for him on our table and took out my phone from my pant's pocket to have a look at the messages that I had received while having breakfast.

One text was from my Mom, asking me about my presence at Seth's wedding as she wouldn't be going.

'Yes, mom. I'll be there. Don't worry. Love you. Miss you.' I replied to her with a smile as I, truly, did miss her. The last time I had seen her was about a month ago when I had visited my parents in our small town which was located about two hours drive away from New York.

I was so busy in looking through my mother's messages that I didn't see the person who last entered the restaurant; the person who noticed me and came towards me.

"Ana!"

My heart skipped a beat, all the color drained from my face and my blood froze in my veins as I heard that voice call me 'Ana' again. All I could hope was that probably my ears were ringing and I was hearing things. With horror etched on every feature of my face, I looked up from my phone's screen to the person standing in front of me.

*******

A/N

Cliffhanger!!! O.o

Like Tiffany? XD Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. VOTE, COMMENT & FAN <3

Also, I have changed the category of this story from Humor & Romance to Humor & Chicklit. Somehow, it appealed to me more. XD

God bless you all. Take care.

Thank you <3

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