Unloved: A Novel (The Undone)

The first half-week of school had been perfectly uneventful. I went as far as celebrating with Sadie by scream-singing MisterWives’ “Reflections” while dancing around the apartment and cleaning up.

After Ms. B, Sadie’s elderly neighbor who has been a huge help with Oliver and Liam, agreed to watch them over the weekend, we spent Saturday night playing drinking games with each other on the floor of our apartment and watching all our favorite romantic movies.

I’d woken up at four in the morning passed out on the ground, holding hands with my snarky roommate. Then snuck a pillow under her head, fixed the blanket over her, and returned to my room to sleep in, only waking when I hear the front door slam and a trail of little voices announcing that Sadie had brought her brothers over.

Pulling myself from bed, brushing my teeth and trying to look at least slightly like I didn’t get hit by a train last night, I’m greeted by a happy sight in our little kitchenette—Sadie and Liam making pancakes and Oliver setting the table.

“You’re starting to impress me with your”—she makes a drinking motion with her hands behind Liam’s back—“abilities.”

“God, my head hurts.” I laugh and start to shake my head, but the pain makes me freeze and I lay it in the cradle of my arms on the tabletop instead. “I think the sugar content is doing me dirty.”

Sadie smiles and squeezes my shoulder as she steps by. “Well, I don’t know where this new side is coming from, but I for one am loving it.”

Because I usually don’t drink or party with her. I’m as straitlaced and well-behaved as I can be. Sadie knows I don’t drink around Tyler, and she doesn’t ask. Besides the party, the one I don’t remember and don’t wish to remember, considering how much I must’ve embarrassed myself in front of Matt Fredderic and Rhys Koteskiy, I haven’t really gone out with her much since sophomore year.

Not since meeting Tyler.

We eat our pancakes mostly in peace, Liam talking nearly constantly with his mouth full. Oliver stays quiet, eating slowly and watching over Sadie and Liam carefully. He might not be the oldest, but he acts like he’s the man of the house already, and it makes my heart squeeze painfully in my chest.

The boys eventually excuse themselves to the couch and our TV.

There’s a loud knock at the door and both Sadie and I groan, hands clapping over our ears.

“You get it,” I say. “I never want to see the light of day again.”

Sadie snickers at my exaggeration, hitting my shoulder with her hip lightly as she crosses to the door. The pancakes are gone, but my stomach is still growling, so I head to the fridge to scavenge for some string cheese and the giant tub of watermelon, managing to balance a water bottle under my arm as I take my loot and head for my room.

Then Sadie calls my name, in that voice tinged with attitude, and my stomach drops.

“Tyler is here,” she says, coming back over to me, taking the snacks from my hands and allowing me to steal back one of the sealed string cheese packs.

“Hey.” Sadie stops me, quirking up an eyebrow. “Say the word, Ro, and you know I’ll make him go.”

“I know, but it’s okay.” It’s not a lie, but it’s something I would never ask of her. “I should probably talk to him anyway.”

She takes everything to the counter and heads for the couch with her brothers, pulling her hoodie back on as she goes.

Tyler isn’t in the doorway when I open it, and for a moment I feel a little calm, until I poke my head out and see him leaned against the wall. He straightens and smiles at me, that same soft smile that makes me feel like he truly cares for me, like I’m the only woman he’s ever seen. Then his gaze drops, making its usual assessing perusal of my body as I close our door and lean against it.

“You look like you had a rough night.”

It’s an accusation, and suddenly, my walls start to move back up.

“I don’t… what?”

“Ro.” He sighs heavily, like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. He runs his hands through his hair, making it fly around at odd angles where leftover gel seems to stick to the strands. “I know you probably saw the pictures and—”

I can’t hear him over the sudden buzzing in my head. The pictures?

My mind races, heart thumping. Pictures of what? An image of Freddy and me in the pool, flirting or giggling, flits through my mind. Then another: me, drunk and making a fool of myself, dressed like “a child,” as Tyler would see it.

“What happened?” I ask, crossing my arms but leaving my tone open and sympathetic even as a knot settles in my stomach. He shoves his hand into his pocket and reaches across to hand me his phone.

Tyler’s eyebrows dip and his eyes shutter, and his face looks so hurt that I find myself wanting to reach for him, because I do love him. I don’t want him to feel hurt or upset.

I want it to work with him… right?

But apparently he’s more concerned with getting his hands on Lucy Hamilton while spending the weekend at home in New York.

Because the photo I’m looking at is Tyler, dressed in a beautiful suit I would kill to see him in, with a leggy blonde on his lap, silken hair in a chignon and a deep red dress pouring over her like a model on the cover of a magazine. His face is tipped down to hear whatever she’s whispering in his ear, his hands on the skin exposed by the high slit of her dress, eyes locked on to her cleavage.

They were both on the Academic Bowl team—her at Princeton and him at Waterfell—before graduating last year. Tyler stayed here for grad school, garnering a leadership role over Tinley’s cohort, while studying directly under her. But his childhood friend Lucy Hamilton ended up at NYC for business school.

I’d wanted to be on the Academic Bowl team, once upon a time. But Tyler begged me not to try out for it, claiming we needed space from each other and deciding that Academic Bowl was his thing. I wasn’t allowed to be part of it.

“You need your own thing, Ro. The Academic Bowl is… I don’t think you’d like it. Too stuffy and academic for you. That’s just not you.”

Not me, because I was “so girly,” as he often said. Something he liked about me once. And then he graduated and suddenly I needed to be more sophisticated but failed in every way.

But Lucy was sophistication personified—the preppy, gorgeous Ivy League soccer player and apparent academic genius, who fit right in with his wealthy, elegant family. The girl who he’d continued to claim was “just a friend” until last year when a few photos were sent to me anonymously of him with his tongue down her throat in a snooty Prohibition-style bar while on a weekend at home in New York.

We broke up, but only for a week, before the endless attention—flowers, delivered lunches, excessive gifts appearing at our dorm door—and his romantic, heartfelt apology texts convinced me to talk to him again.

It was forgotten as quickly as it happened, and anytime I’d bring up “the misunderstanding,” as he referred to it, he said I was trying to sabotage our relationship. “Why do you want to rake me over the coals again, Ro?”

As if he wanted me to forget, to swallow the hurt until it was buried deep enough. I didn’t think that was possible.

He’d never taken me to meet his family, but spent every vacation “running into her,” and then calling me crazy when I asked exactly what was going on between them.

And we just talked last week about trying again. About dating slowly, casually, because he told me after one of the COSAM introductory dinners that he was proud to have me by his side and that we could be perfect together.

Anger flushes my cheeks, and I hate the way my body wars between crying and screaming.

I settle for biting my lip and wiping slyly at my eyes, because if Tyler sees me cry, I’ll never live it down. It won’t be about his mess anymore; it’ll turn into a lecture about my overdramatic emotional reactions.

He’ll use it against me.

I’d sobbed in front of him once before, completely broken down about missing my family, and he’d told me to stop behaving like such a baby. To “grow up.” It hurt, but I swallowed my pride because maybe he was right. I’d never seen Sadie or any of my friends from work or classes cry openly over homesickness.

Grow up.

“I honestly didn’t think she’d be there, Ro. I would’ve told you,” he says. Considering he hadn’t told me once in the times this happened before, I doubted that. “But you know our families are close, and she’s so incredibly smart, so it was good working with her. We won the entire thing.”

“Good for you,” I snap, shocking myself and him equally.

“Don’t snap at me like that. This wouldn’t even be a problem if you’d just—” Do better. Be better. Act right. He wants to say it; he has a million times before. Tyler cuts himself off and runs a hand through his hair, making himself look a little more like a mock version of 2008 Edward Cullen, the strands standing nearly straight up and out to the sides. It’s funny enough to keep back a few more tears. “Look, never mind. I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“Seems like you did,” I mutter, but his proximity and the anxiety rushing through me is enough to have me wanting to make things good again between us.

Calm, at least. I hate fighting, so much that I concede every time. It’s easier that way.

“I’m not mad.” The lie burns my throat enough that I reach to hold it. Like that will stop the lump from forming. “I need some space, okay?”

“I promise, it was an inconveniently timed photo.” He puts his hands up defensively. “Truly, Ro, I need you to believe me. Don’t make this a bigger deal than it is, okay?”

How many times did he practice saying those words like an acceptance speech? The version of me that wants to shout at him, yell and scream, maybe slam the door in his face, is buried so far beneath the need to keep the peace that I’m not sure if she exists anymore. Instead, I’m piling hurt on top of hurt.

And I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that I will probably forgive him, and end up right back where we started. Right here.

He kisses my forehead, seeming pleased when I don’t push him back or shrug off his embrace.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? We can talk more. Whatever you need.”

I wait in the hallway until I’m sure that I can swallow the tears back so Sadie—and more important, her brothers—don’t see.