— not super proud of this one and definitely not my best work—

Just thinking about him makes me sick. _How can such a man be so perfect and yet so disgusting at the same time? I am convinced there is a thing as ‘too perfect’, and that would be him._ My thoughts slowly spiral as my finger mindlessly makes contact with the phone screen. Images of Ryan Fich insult my vision as I try to look for a single flaw.

“That’s it! I can’t find a single one!” I accidentally made Kassandra jump, after all, it had been silent for roughly ten minutes.

“Viv, there is no way that he is perfect. No one is perfect.” She groans.

“I swear he is. Ryan does everything by the book, dressed to the nines, and not a single wrinkle can be found on his clothes. I can’t stand it!”

“You can’t stand someone else being more perfect than you. Your OCD messes with your head all the time anyway.”

For a moment I glare at Kassandra. The hardest thing about being friends with someone like her is that she doesn’t care whose feelings get hurt by what she says. Her words burn their way through my ears and trickle down to my heart. All the admiration I may have had for her- gone. The pathetic part of me reveals it self, painting the best scenario in my head involuntarily.

“Kassi, are you hungry? I think I’m hungry…” My voice had been no more than a mere grumble.

I didn’t wait for a response from her before I left my bedroom, clouded with frustration. Instead of being ugly with words, I occasionally choose an atrocious food. Some therapist I had in my younger adult years suggested cooking how I felt compared to being destructive and exhibiting behaviors that would be detrimental to my health.

Once in the kitchen, I make up my mind on making dinner for my so-called friend. I “accidentally” turn the oven on a bit too high and wait for it to preheat. While the oven heats up, I begin to work on prepping peppers to be cooked on the stove. Normally you would de-seed peppers before cooking them but I leave them in so that way Kassi can experience a new level of heat, one that burns her worse than she burned me… at least that’s my hope. I search for the most over-ripe onion I have with the desire of making her feel gross on top of it. I’m pretty sure the saying is “revenge is best served cold” but I say it’s best served hot and disgusting. Garlic bread goes in the oven without a timer because my nose is pretty good at figuring out when toast is done. A dinner isn’t complete without a protein so a slimey piece of chicken gets tossed into the pan with the peppers on the stove. That’s what she is: slimey and grimey. ‘Maybe she’ll see herself in this dish when I give it to her.’ My inner voice hisses as a nasty smile creeps onto my face. Twenty minutes later, a black rock, crusty chicken and depressing peppers rest on a plate and I head back to Kassandra with them.

“I made this especially for you! I hope you can taste every bit of hatred in it. Turns out I can be ugly too.” Actually, I think it’s ‘revenge is best served on a silver platter’.