Page 29 of Unloved

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 hetrulycares 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 beautifulsuit 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 hischildhood friendLucy 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 washisthing. 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 tryingto 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 wejusttalked 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.

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