Chapter Text
Kate Sharma despises Anthony Bridgerton with every fiber of her being.
It’s always been this way as far as she can remember – ever since he pushed her out of the swings that first afternoon they were put together. She was momentarily distracted by the sight of juice boxes Mr. Bridgerton was bringing by, and then – off she went, flying in the air and hitting the dirt hard. All she can recall is Anthony standing above her with something like marvel on his face.
(Actually, she can’t recall much from the incident at all, but the picture she has painted of it in her mind is beyond vivid, becoming even more dramatic with every retelling. During one such recounting, her 4-year-old self spends several minutes mid-air before falling.)
Anyway, it’s always been this way, the one constant in her life. It’s good, you know – to have someone to snarl at, someone you can think about when you’re at the dentist or when your dad dies or when a guy you shamefully thought was cute goes for your sister instead.
Most days, Kate says to herself, her hatred for Anthony Bridgerton is a fine shrine to worship at.
**
It must be in the summer of 1996, before her senior year – no, it is before that, right before she starts high school, lying in the sun by Aunt Danbury’s pool that she first knows she despises him, truly hates him, not as a child hates another but as a freshly formed person does. Violently, passionately, blindly. He is just too there, taking up all that magnificent space around himself, a boy of sixteen, loud, gorgeous, too much. Rich boys tend to be like that, in her limited experience.
“Hey, Sharma!”
The shout comes from the water where Anthony and his brothers are playing that game of who-could-drown-the-other-fastest – a game that teenage boys just love to play, for some unknown reason – and as she looks up, she sees water dripping down down down on skin.
She suddenly feels incredibly self-conscious in her second-hand bathing suit.
“What.”
“Come into the water!”
“No, thanks.”
“What,” Anthony grins, “are you scared?”
“Oh, very much. Scared of getting an infection by being in the same pool as you.”
With that, Colin and Benedict roar with laughter, and this time Anthony doesn’t even see it coming when they pull him under. Still, when he comes up for air, something dark is in his eyes, and when the sun begins to descend and Mrs. Bridgerton calls to them from the big house, Anthony doesn’t even look at her when he pokes her in the ribs with his finger.
She yelps in surprise more than in pain.
“Ow – what the hell?!”
“Oh no,” he says, eyes wide in fake concern. “Are these the first signs of an infection?”
Oh, she hates him.
**
“What the hell is in your mouth?” she asks one day in 1995 when she and Edwina are over at the Bridgerton house at a party – someone’s birthday, or an early summer celebration? She can’t quite recall, but she knows Edwina dragged her over there, only to promptly abandon her to the dance floor, and Kate finds refuge in the Bridgertons’ gigantic kitchen.
“This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan is playing loudly from the other room, and the walls are pulsing with it. Well, at least Edwina is having a good time, she thinks.
This is something she envies her sister for. Kate has never been one for dancing. There is just something menacing about the way music makes her body feel, her limbs get heavy with it. Like something could snap, like she could move and become formless, structureless at any point.
Like she could lose control.
Anthony grins into his fruit at her question – a large mango he’s been peeling for literal minutes. Why he’s sitting there at the kitchen table at his own party (or his mother’s? Daphne’s? Whose godforsaken party is this?), Kate will never know. She’s just slightly annoyed that her escape has been compromised by him of all people, because now she just cannot shake that pull from beneath her skin that seems to emerge whenever Anthony walks into a room.
It's probably a physical manifestation of her absolute hatred of him. Gotta be.
“What is in your mouth, Bridgerton?” she repeats.
“Oh Sharma, I always knew we’d get here eventually. Anything could be in my mouth if you –”
She groans in frustration, waving him to stop, and Anthony just laughs. That asshole is making fun of her. She feels so stupid, she’s dressed up for this, into a goddamn summer dress of all things, and here he is, sitting at the kitchen table, legs spread in that annoying way men sit, like spaces are supposed to be filled, and the harsh lights of the kitchen paint him like a wolf.
“I’d rather eat back my own vomit, Bridgerton. I mean, what is physically in your mouth, right now, at present?”
He pauses.
“A mango.” It’s almost a question.
“And which part of the mango, may I ask?”
“… The skin of a mango,” he says quite sheepishly, which does not make her smile, it doesn’t, there is just something about the way he says it. Fucking... boyish or whatever. It’s stupid, really.
She leans back instead, resting her back at the kitchen counter. “And why in God’s name are you eating the skin of a mango?”
Anthony opens his mouth, his tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek. “I’ll have you know that a preliminary study was written about the health benefits of mango skin –“
“That you have to eat it?”
“ – that it helps reduce the risk of diseases like cancer and Type 2 diabetes.”
“A preliminary study?”
“Which means it was peer-reviewed.”
“Which means it’s not scientifically proven,” she shoots back.
He grimaces. “It’s kind of proven.”
“It kind of isn’t.”
Anthony lets out a small noise of discontent, leaning forward in the kitchen chair. “What, Sharma, do you want me to die – “
“Now that is a trick question – “
“ – in a horrible disease at such a young age?” he finishes, and this, this gives her pause. She opens her mouth, and no words come out. They are looking at each other now, she and Anthony, in this echo-y kitchen in 1995, and Anthony’s father passed away two years ago and she knows they are both thinking about it, about the way Anthony’s boyish face is drained of all color as he looks over to the spot where Edmund Bridgerton has been standing until just a millisecond ago and he is running to him, running to him –
“No,” she gets out, small, terribly small.
“Then,” Anthony swallows, his face changing back to that dark, smug serenity she knows from house parties and vacations and school hallways. He’s eighteen years old, tall, taller now than his father, and she cannot stand the way her hand shakes in this moment when he grins. “Then wouldn’t you rather I ate the skin of this mango in peace, keeping you company?”
She huffs. “I do not need you to keep me company.”
“Don’t worry, Sharma,” he breathes, stretching his arms above his head. “It’s perfectly fine to be a late bloomer.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I’ll dance with you later.”
“No, you won’t.”
No, he doesn’t.
**
That summer is the Summer of Fights. Benedict is keeping a tally in the back of his sketchbook, and three of the fights are deemed historically significant. She and Anthony get into an argument over which of the Golden Girls is the oldest (winner: Kate), which of the two of them is the better driver (Anthony; Kate gets a flat tire when she tries to parallel park while Anthony is sitting next to her in the passenger seat, slapping his knees in triumph), and whether or not Kate will be dateless for bonfire night.
This last one is probably made out to be a bigger deal than it actually is, what with them gulping back curses on the stairway of Aunt Danbury’s house, like cats circling each other after midnight.
Kate says yes to some guy named Dorset when he asks her and then spends the entire night looking for Anthony, desperate to show him that she is not a worthless loser. Dorset tries to feel her up on their way home, so Kate assumes that technically, neither of them won that third argument.
**
At school, it’s a blur. It’s his senior year, she’s a junior, and Anthony Bridgerton stands obnoxiously tall next to her locker, talking to Benedict. Putting her books away, a note falls with a name on it, spinning to the floor.
“Who is that from?” he asks immediately, interrupting Benedict in the middle of a story about a mysterious girl he met at some party, and Kate has no energy for this.
“Why does it have to be from anybody?”
As she leans down to get it, Anthony’s faster, and now they’re kneeling on the ground – another staring game. His eyes are the deepest, most unsettling brown and his mouth twitches slightly as he tries to get the note from her hand, and goddamn it, she will win.
He smirks. “You’re right, Sharma, your romantic history would suggest it’s not from anyone. Even if it is, hope whoever is writing you notes is ready to get his face scratched.”
“Scratching could not make it worse if their face looks anything like yours, Bridgerton.”
“Mmm, great comeback, did you read it in a book?”
“Well, unlike you, I actually know how to read.”
“Yeah, had a lot of downtime to fill since nobody wants to hang out with you? Must suck to know that everyone is only tolerating you because of your sister.”
He always goes too far. In the background, Benedict clears his throat.
“Not as much as it must suck to know that you’ll never measure up to your family name. Anthony Bridgerton, does. Not. Cut it.”
Just for a moment, his face falls before he smiles again, hollow. “Fuck you.”
Kate guesses she won this one. But it doesn’t really feel like winning.
She reaches for the note as he turns back to Benedict, finally reading the name on it.
It’s not her name – it’s Edwina’s.
**
And then suddenly, it’s summer again, the last summer before Anthony goes off to college and the last one before Kate’s senior year. She and Anthony are positively feral in each other’s presence, but Kate doesn’t think it’s anything out of the ordinary until she overhears Edwina whisper to Mary in the living room:
“I thought they would grow out of this by now.”
But it seems they are only growing into it. From shouting matches to quiet curses, Edwina and the Bridgerton siblings are forced to endure hours of animosity between the two of them. Anthony is cruel, cold and unforgiving, he never stops staring at her, appraising her, judging her every move. She feels stiff and awkward around him, like her body cannot be tamed enough – any flaw, any minor misstep could mean her downfall. He could see.
“Do you think this is too many butterfly clips?” Edwina wonders one day, looking up at her from the mirror, but she’s not really paying attention. “Kate?”
“If he plays the Macarena one more time, I am going to lose it.”
Edwina lets out an exasperated sound. “I just can’t understand how you can hate him so much. I mean, Anthony has been our family friend for ages. We’ve known him since diapers – you have, anyway.”
“Did you know he pushed me out of the swings once?”
“Oh, come on, Kate.”
“And anyway, it’s not that I hate him…. I just disagree with his existence.”
“I think if you put this stupid competition thing aside, you would see that you two have a lot in common, actually.”
“Y2K?”
“Kate,” Edwina repeats, pleading, and Kate suddenly feels that envy again, that ugly, dark undercurrent coming on. Edwina – sweet, kind, good Edwina – will never know what it’s like to be the eldest sister. What it’s like to have your name be used like a switch, to always always be expected to show an example, walk the wire, be the bigger person.
She loves her sister. She should be better.
But God, fighting with Anthony is like a storm, a delicious thunder running through her, the kind of pain you know is bad for you but you still want it anyway, like touching a hot dish a second too long.
It’s the one thing she has, that is just hers, and maybe she isn’t ready to let go of it just yet.
**
“– that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution – but from annihilation –“
“Holy shit, Colin, will you stop?” Anthony yells out, throwing his hands in the air, finally, finally interrupting Colin who has been reciting the speech from Independence Day for the last 4 minutes, laying on the old waterbed in Aunt Danbury’s pool house. They’re gathered there, all the kids, self-exiled from the adult crowd – Eloise and Edwina are practicing some dance they saw on MTV while Daphne watches on, and Benedict would be trying to make a sketch of them all, if only Colin wasn’t moving around so much.
It's Anthony alone who seems to be somehow absent. He keeps glancing out the window to where the adults are sitting, like he knows that he is already halfway there, that it’s only a matter of time before he is going to have to join them.
For a second, Kate forgets and she looks; he is awfully splendid in the color palette of all the noise, the borrowed champagne, and the easy summer evening. His jaw, his eyebrows, the little line between them that is deepening with every passing day, and his hands –
“Oh my God, Bridgerton,” she can hear herself saying. “Do you not wipe your face ever? What the hell is that?”
Anthony appears to tremble slightly before bringing his attention back to the room full of them, to Kate, with a glint in his eyes that almost makes her gasp. “I’m growing a beard, if you must know.”
“Are you trying to divert attention from your weird shoulders? Because it’s not working.”
“If only there was something that could divert attention from your miniscule chest.”
She guffaws. “I’m sorry, is this an after school special? Am I being cyberbullied?”
“You were the one who went after my shoulders – “
“Yeah,” Colin interjects, grinning up at the ceiling. “It’s the one thing he’s sensitive about.”
Kate shrugs devilishly. “It’s no big deal, but they are weird. At least I don’t look like I’ve got two baby koalas nesting on my face.”
“Koalas do not make nests – “
“Whatever, you look stupid.”
“It’s no big deal, but I’m right,” he insists, echoing her, fidgeting in his seat. She draws in a breath.
“Guess you would know. Big college boy over there.”
At that, Anthony simply storms out of the pool house, slamming the door behind him.
All eyes turn to Kate.
She lets out a deep sigh as she gets up to follow him, because suddenly it’s like this between the two of them – she has to be Kate with him, too? The older sister, the mature one, God forbid she loses her cool for one second, oh no. Kate always has to salvage what’s been smashed to pieces by someone else. But she didn’t think it’d start happening with Anthony as well.
Maybe she thought what they have would last a little longer.
“What,” she cries as she finds Anthony outside by the bushes, “you can dish it out but you can’t take it?”
Surprisingly, he is smoking, and Kate stops dead in her tracks, because there is something wrong with this image, isn’t there? Inhales, exhales, that hazy cloud of smoke between them, and now she can’t see the boy eating mango skin in his mother’s kitchen any longer. But oh, even like this, Anthony Bridgerton, her only and most cherished enemy, is striking; she can feel her hatred for him in her mouth, in her palms, in her stomach.
“That thing will kill you,” she sneers at his cigarette.
Anthony’s smile is voracious. “Promise?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re acting all weird tonight.”
“Weirder than my shoulders are?”
“Anthony.”
At the mention of his name, he looks at her, wild like an animal.
“I don’t know what it is,” he says at last, running his free hand through his hair a little helplessly. Kate is overcome with something like liquid iron. “I’m just… surprised, I guess.”
She hums, uncertain. “Surprised at what?”
“Thought there’d be more time,” says Anthony. Kate opens her mouth to reply – and of course that this is the moment the fireworks start, and they’re standing there, a boy and a girl entangled by their loathing, bathed in harsh blues and lilacs.
It’s the summer of 1996. This is their youth.
In between those glorious rays of light on the sky, Anthony mumbles, almost as if to himself, “Maybe we should run away together.”
Kate makes a fist. “It’s a shame we hate each other.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Shame.”