Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel) by Ava Ayers

laptop started burning my legs, I grabbed my phone and started in on Instagram. I went to Nicolas’ page first and scrolled through all his pictures. I then went to his friends’ pictures. I ran across a photo that a beautiful girl named India Zamani posted that evening. The setting looked tropical and it was a group of friends jumping off the ground. One of the guys in the pictures looked like Nicolas. I held my phone up to my face and couldn’t make out the face. I tapped on the screen to try to enlarge the photo and I ended up liking India Zamani’s Instagram picture. I freaked and closed Instagram.
    My stomach creaked and groaned so much, it sounded like an old wooden ship. Ivory-Lou knocked on my door and came into my room.
    “We’re going to breakfast. You coming?” he said as he looked around my room.
    “Breakfast? What time is it?”
    “Eleven. You been to bed yet?”
    “Um, I didn’t think it was that late.”
    “It is. Get some sleep. You look like shit,” he said and closed my door.
    I called Stephanie and told her how I spent my evening.
    “You’re crazy, Beth. You spent like seventeen hours stalking all those people?”
    “Yes,” I said and shook my head. “And I’m no closer to any answers.”
    “What answers are you looking for?”
    “I want to know how he feels about me.”
    “And you’re going to find this out by studying all these people’s lives? You don’t even know if there’s a connection.”
    “There is,” I said and chewed on my fingernail. “I know there is. I haven’t told you the worst part yet.”
    “It could not possibly get worse, Beth.”
    “It does. I was on India Zamani’s Instagram and I ended up hearting one of her pictures.”
    “Who the hell is India Zamani?”
    “No idea. I thought she was in a picture with Nicolas. I thought I could blow the picture up and ended up hearting instead.”
    “Did you unheart?” she said.
    “You can unheart?”
    “Yes! Unheart it!” she said.
    “They all have perfect lives, Steph,” I said as I rested against my pillow and yawned. “I uncovered a group of people who I never knew existed. I should have been an archeologist.”
    “No one’s life is perfect, Beth. Besides, people could be thinking that about you.”
    “No one thinks that about me, Stephanie. These girls fly to Paris for hot chocolate and go surfing in Australia and discover fucking treehouses in forests and turn them into studios where they can paint and have photo shoots with their friends, while I, on the other hand, am the chick known as Garbage Girl that someone wants to hump in the dumpster.”
    “Beth, you are not that girl. You just think you are. Nothing good comes from comparing yourself.”
    “Well, it’s all I have. I thought he felt a certain way about me and now I’m not so sure. There’s a distance to his writing.”
    “First of all, you cannot pull any emotion out of a short email. And second, why don’t you ask him?”
    “I can’t ask him,” I said and closed my eyes. “I’m afraid of his answer. And I’m afraid she will be right.”

 
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    I woke up nine hours later and immediately went to Instagram to unheart India Zamani’s picture. And then I saw an email notification from India Zamani.
    “Shit,” I said as I stared at her email.
    It read: Hi. Who are you ?
    I sent her an email back an apologized and told her I had the wrong picture. She wrote back and told me she thought I was her ex-boyfriend stalking her.
    And thus began my friendship with India Zamani.
    India Zamani was exactly like the other girls I stalked that night only we had a lot more in common than I thought. Her ex-boyfriend dumped her and broke her heart and she started dating another guy named Devon. Devon lived in Denver and acted hot and cold toward India. India Zamani and I were missed connections bonding over missed connections.
    She lived in Montauk in a big house with her mother Lucia, a former model, her sixth