Page 128 of Unloved

It’s a dare, waiting for me to play with his flirty comment. He waggles his eyebrows as he reads a few of them aloud.

I don’t need the reminder—I remember them all.

Dance on top of a bar likeCoyote Ugly.

Third base in a car.

Skinny-dip! (But don’t get caught or go to jail!)

Go on a crazy spring break trip. (But don’t get arrested!)

Get a tattoo.

Lose my virginity to someone who loves me.

There’s more, but I stick on the last one. It aches to think about. To try and dissect the real way Tyler felt about me.

“It was something Sadie and I made freshman year. For me to check off all the things I’d never done but wanted to do.”

He contemplates it for a second before grabbing the list and running over to my bed. It’s hard to rip my gaze from him. He turns and winks at me over his shoulder, like he knows what I was looking at.

“Tattoos?” he asks. “I’m checking that one off. Do you have a Sharpie?” He opens my desk drawer without waiting a beat, grabbing a green one and a black one from my neat pile. “Which one should we do next?”

He’s excited, and it frees a piece of me that’s been locked away for years.

Tyler was excited, too, when he first saw it. Then the excitement wore off. I bury the hope beneath the memories of his laughter, warning myself away.

“None of them,” I snap, grabbing the board away from him. “Seriously, it’s something stupid from freshman year.”

My own words sound so hateful I shut my eyes. But it’s not toward him. The hatefulness and anger are all for myself, because there was a time when this was important to me. A beacon of hope after leaving home. But it faded away, along with my excitement. Now when I look at the list, the doodles and lipstick prints, I only feel the ache of the loss of time.

“Let’s try this a different way,” Matt says, but it’s almost like he is talking to himself. “I would like to do these things on your list with you. I would love it, actually. But only if you want to. Do you want to try one with me?”

His voice is soft. I feel a little bit like crying.

“Now?”

He shrugs with a weak smile. “Yeah. Why not? If I’m the one you want to do these things with, then the only thing that’ll stop us is you, because we’re in this together. But you’re in control of our direction, Ro.”

His words are lovely, gentle. But something about it is wrong. I feel it like a pinch to my arm.

“What about you?”

“Me? What about me?”

He’s still smiling—dopey-eyed and boyishly handsome.

“It’s your body, too, Matt. You have just as much control as me.”

The words feel heavy and awkward, and part of me wants to shy away. But there is another, larger part of me that’s insistentthis is important.

My words pull the carefree expression from his face, brow furrowing as he examines me. The fact that the idea is so foreign to him makes me feel a quick spark of anger in my stomach.

He raises his hands, like he’s going to reach for me, but then he clenches his fists and rests them on the bed between us. A bitter laugh—then a smile, lips parted.

I wait quietly, watching as he tries to push back his usual movehere—like he’s actively unlearning the protective flirting that’s so comfortable for him.

He glances back at the list like a lifeline before exclaiming, “I think we start with the whipped cream—do you have any?”

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