Page 57 of Unloved

Every time it happens, I wait for it to hurt less. I wait for the moment people talk about, the numbness. He’s done it so many times that eventually I’ll ignore it and move on. But it never comes. I feel everything like a frayed nerve, open and throbbing with the pain of it all.

Freddy puts his hand on my knee and squeezes, a smile smoothing the worry lines on his cheeks, but his brow stays furrowed.

I try to smile back, to reassure him that I’m fine, but my stomach somersaults again and I hiccup a sob instead, ducking my head.

“Shit,” he says under his breath, looping an arm around my neck and burying my face into his chest, giving me a private dark space to quietly break down. “Go ahead, Ro. Let it out.”

I shake my head against him, but he presses a surprising kiss to my hair and only holds me harder.

“It’s okay. The lights are off—everyone’s sleeping or got headphones in. You’re fine, cry if you need to. I’ve got you.”

I believe him.

Freddy, as I really know him now, is someone I am learning I can trust. I can rely on him.

Matt Fredderic has been a thousand different things in my head. After meeting him freshman year, I romanticized him endlessly. In my dreams, he was the cool, popular boy who took off mymetaphorical glasses and fell in love with me. A knight come to save me in my tall ivory tower. The gentle lover who took my virginity with quiets whispers of “is this okay?” or “you’re so perfect,” and then confessed his devotion to me in an epic, movie-worthy “It’s you. It’s always been you” moment.

And then, after I met Tyler, I abandoned those fantasies of Matt Fredderic in favor of what I thought was a real chance at a love story. What I can now see as me begging him for even a modicum of something romantic.

Something he deemed unrealistic.

“Real people don’t act like they do in your books, Ro.”

But it wasn’t even the romance I’d wanted. It was my desperation for wanting to feel something real. Something overwhelming, but worth it.

I spent my life safely at home, close to my parents because it was comfortable, and their love was a warm and tangible thing. Then, after my dad’s stroke, I spent every waking moment with them out of fear. I didn’t want to miss a second—just in case.

But I’d lived entire lives, thousands of them, in books. And part of me always imagined what falling in love would feel like.

I’d longed for it.

Maybe Tyler is right.

Maybe I am ridiculous and naive, but even admitting that in the safety of my own head is embarrassing. How could I possibly ever admit to anyone else that I spent a year of my life begging to have sex with someone who called me desperate when I told him I loved him?

That I spenttwo yearscontinuously seeking validation from a guy who consistently measured me against another girl to show me my flaws.

As if just being better—more serious and sophisticated, smarter, more competitive—as ifthatwould earn me his love. Shine brighter, Ro, but not too bright; not brighter than him.

And now?

I feel… disgusted with myself.

Why did I do that? What made me so desperate to be enough for him that I continued to bend and shrink myself into the box he wanted to put me in?

The realization is somehow worse than anything Tyler spewed at me tonight.

So many of my pieces, the things that make meme, are gone, chipped away so that I don’t know who I am anymore.

I feel lost. Floating without a tether.

I rest my head against Freddy’s warm, solid chest and he holds me, whispering soothing nonsensical words so calming I find my tears drying up, a numbness slowly seeping into my bones, and I feel safer, so I lean into it.

CHAPTER 22Freddy

Ro doesn’t speak for the entire hour-long ride back.

I give her one of my AirPods to listen to, putting a playlist of Taylor Swift on because I vividly remember her bright, wide smile and beautiful voice singing loudly in the back of my car.

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