Unloved: Chapter 1

“Give it to Ro.”

I stop short, pausing to survey the open office space filled with the other teaching assistants and tutors for our department. The toe of my sneaker kicks against the moderately heavy door again, managing to hold it open long enough that I can slip through without dropping the giant stack of papers currently blanketing my arms.

Not one of the boys I work with offers to help. No one even bats an eye at my struggle as I plop the over-full folders onto my clean desk space.

It’s quiet, but it always is during summer semester—especially finals week—which is why I always opt to come back early. That and the desperate itching need to get back that seems to plague me beginning early July.

“Give me what?”

Rodger, one of the other tutors in our department, tosses me the folder in his hands while Tyler, my boyfriend of two years now, slinks behind me and rests his head on my shoulder, playing with the ends of my hair.

“Rodger doesn’t want his student.” Tyler laughs, pressing a kiss into my hair. I bristle and freeze, because the last time we spoke over the phone he told me we definitely together.

Tyler and I met my sophomore year, my first year as a tutor in my declared major. I’d come to Waterfell knowing I wanted to study biomedical sciences, but not sure of what track to follow. A year above me, Tyler was my mentor and guide for my first year of tutoring.

I looked up to him because he was successful and smart and well respected in our classes. And he relentlessly pursued me—extravagantly, publicly. Flowers before classes, surprising me with lunch at work, offering me rides to and from Brew Haven—and this was all before we ever started dating.

The romantic in me swooned, thrilled that I would finally have the affection I’d always dreamed of. But somewhere along the way, things changed.

His words from our phone call last weekend ring in my ears like a distant alarm I’m content to ignore.

“Good morning, babe. Welcome to the lair of complaining and being pussies.”

His hands stretch out, like he’s introducing our office to the HGTV at-home viewers.

“Shove it, Donaldson,” Rodger snaps, seemingly more agitated than usual.

Surprisingly, I like him most out of the group. Possibly because I live with someone who has a perpetual anger problem, and she’s my best friend.

“Morning,” I say, a little distracted as I flip open the file and look at the sample papers before me. My eyes scan the words quickly, brow furrowing. “These look copied. Like… word for word. Are they all plagiarized?”

“Every word,” Rodger sighs, rubbing his eyes and sinking into a chair at the group table in the center of our circle of desks.

“He used to pull that shit with me all the time. That’s why I dumped him off on you last year,” Tyler says, shoving Rodger lightly as he moves toward his own workspace.

“I can’t work with that guy anymore,” Rodger says, mumbling into his hands as he rubs his face and combs back through his messy dark hair. “I had him all last semester, and this summer has killed me. Please, Ro, take him off my hands.”

I bite my lip for a moment, sliding my hip against the counter and resting the papers atop it. “Summer is about to close—and besides, I think I have a full stack for fall already.”

Tyler hands out coffees from a tray, and I eye him the entire time. When he spots me looking, he rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry, I didn’t know what you’d want.”

I order the same exact thing every time, no matter the weather—an iced dirty chai—and we’ve been dating for years, but I give a light smile.

“It’s fine. I’ll grab one at work.”

“I figured.” He smiles, walking over and pressing me into the counter. Another kiss before he straightens up. “No way she’ll take it.”

“Ro’ll take it. She’s the best tutor we have—better than all of us, right?” Mark—another tutor, and Tyler’s closest friend here—says, stretching and spinning in his swivel chair at his desk.

It’s not a compliment. In fact, it’s the opposite.

If I’m asking questions, then I’m trying to get help or sympathy. I’m weak. But if I’m confident in my skills, then I think I’m better than everyone else.

“I have more students this semester than I know what to do with. And I don’t specialize in dyslexia or dyscalculia.”

“He’s got ADHD, too,” Rodger says unhelpfully.

“Can’t be that hard.” Tyler smirks, leaning to look at the papers I’ve now started to spread across the counter. “Jesus Christ. He knows how to read, right? Some of these copy-paste paragraphs aren’t even, like, in the same universe of relatability.”

I grab a cinnamon bagel off the table, a gift from our head professor, I’m sure, and start smothering it with cream cheese as I look back at a few of the more recent papers. It’s almost like whoever it is isn’t trying.

“A hundred bucks says he doesn’t know how to read,” Mark says before his eyes scan me and he laughs. “A thousand if Ro takes him and he passes the semester above a 2.75.”

“I didn’t say—”

“I’ll take that,” Tyler shouts over me, reaching to grab Mark’s hand. “I’ll raise another thousand that he tries to fuck her first.”

“Tyler,” I choke out, eyebrows at my hairline. “Don’t be gross.”

He shrugs, but there’s something terrifying in the smile still spread across his face.

“Wait till you see who it is,” he says to me before turning to the boys around him. “No way she even takes it when she sees the name—”

Whatever he says next is drowned out underneath the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. I almost spit out the bite of bagel already in my mouth, which is suddenly impossible to chew.

Matthew Fredderic.

He might as well be a mythical creature to all of us. They might talk about him like he’s the dirt beneath the soles of their newly purchased loafers, but for four years they’ve envied him as much as I’ve inexcusably pined over him.

Me and over half the campus.

I push back from the table, silently begging whatever higher power exists that my inadvertent reaction to him—perpetual blushing—doesn’t happen right now. I’ll never hear the end of it.

I spin back toward Tyler and the entire staff room.

“I’m not—”

“Come on, Ro. He’s not going to bite.”

“Yeah,” Tyler says, barely restraining the laughter in his eyes. “He’s gonna try to put his dick in her.”

“Make sure he uses protection, Donaldson,” Mark laughs. “Don’t wanna raise Fredderic’s baby who’s just as retar—”

“Stop,” I snap, spine straightening. “Use that word again and I’m reporting you.”

, I want to say. Because I have reported him already, for his use of language and slurs. But no one has done a thing about it.

The cacophony of their s grates on my ears like gunshots.

“I’m so scared,” Mark sneers.

I wait, again—and seemingly endlessly—for Tyler to notice the way Mark speaks to me. Instead of disgust or anger, he only shows mild annoyance—but not for Mark, for “Just… I don’t know, take my closing meeting with him and see if you can handle it,” Rodger sighs, handing me the other file in his hands. “This is his work from the summer. Maybe you can make sense of what the hell he should do, since he has to pass to maintain his eligibility.”

Eligibility to play hockey, he means, because Matt Fredderic is a star campus wide.

The Waterfell University hockey team is one of the top in the nation, for ten-plus years running now. After making it to the Frozen Four last year, Waterfell poured even more money into the sports budget—hockey, specifically.

Posters and cutouts line our campus, displaying the gleaming faces of the players: the handsome golden boy hockey captain Rhys Koteskiy; the stoic pillar of a goalie, Bennett Reiner; and the hypnotizing, crooked playboy grin of Matthew Fredderic—affectionately nicknamed Freddy. Top goal-scorer two years in a row, instigator extraordinaire, and currently signed to play with Dallas.

All bits of information I don’t to know—probably know.

But once upon a time I’d severely crushed on the left winger and read every article or post about him. Embarrassingly followed his social media and saved ridiculous edits of him fans made on social media.

And yet shockingly, I had no idea he’d needed tutoring help, let alone in department.

“Did he pass Sumnter, at least?” I ask, flipping through the stack of biology tests quickly, barely holding in a wince at the harsh red markings.

“Nope.” Rodger sits back at the table, sipping on his iced black coffee that I’m tempted to steal from his grip. “But he’s gonna have Tinley this time around.”

Dr. Carmen Tinley, our College of Science and Mathematics tutoring department supervisor, as well as the woman we are all desperate to impress for a spot on her graduate cohort for advanced biomedical sciences. She takes on the three highest performing students for the spring semester of her intensive program, and there are seven of us competing for the spot.

Beyond that, there’s a part of me that idolizes her. She’s one of only two women who teach within my major, and she’s friendly with her students—different from Dr. Khabra, who is reserved and often brutal in her grading and teaching practices. Where students are scared—albeit impressed—by Khabra’s brilliance, Tinley is approachable and warm.

“C’mon, RoRo,” my maybe-boyfriend whispers into my ear, dropping his voice. “Do this for us, and I’ll let us try something off the list tonight, yeah?”

My cheeks heat.

It’s stupid now, how easily he dangles the carrot—how much he knows that I want to cross another item off my Sexy College Bucket List that has sat abandoned for years now.

I almost threw it away a few times, but the sentimentality of it—remembering how Sadie and I became friends over cheap boxed wine, writing everything I’d ever wanted to do but never said aloud onto the foam board, using her dark lipstick collection to leave kiss prints all over the white. Remembering how Tyler and I giggled under cool floral sheets as we held each other’s sweaty palms and checked off “lose my virginity” together a year ago, before he covered my body with his in my twin bed and made me feel like something precious.

Remembering how his promises to help me check off each item slowly turned to taunts and jokes.

Remembering how that list has sat, collecting dust for the last year, half empty.

Just like me.

“Off my list?” I can’t keep the wonder out of my voice.

He huffs into my neck. “Yeah, babe. Anything you want.” It’s all teasing, a little mocking, but I grin and bear it because the truth is I really, really want to try it.

“O-okay.”

“So you’re back together then?”

I shrug, feeling Sadie’s words drop like a weight into my stomach. “I mean, technically we never broke up, I guess.”

It’s just after 3 p.m. on a Thursday inside Brew Haven, the coffee shop off campus we both work at part-time, as I help Sadie close, her brothers playing games on my iPad while we clean up. She seems a little more tense than she usually does, but I know things are harder for her now that she’s meeting with the lawyer she hired to gain custody of her brothers.

“That’s bullshit,” she spits, causing Liam to burst into a fit of giggles.

“You said a curse, Sissy,” he says happily. She rolls her eyes at him but tosses a crumpled dollar onto the table with a smirk and musses his hair as we walk past them toward the back.

“He blocked you on everything and yelled at you where we work.” Sadie keeps her voice low, but her words bite.

I swallow down the lump in my throat at the memory of it, the embarrassment of his screaming and the way our cook, Luis, and his older brother, Alex, who managed the restaurant next door, had to stop him and throw him out.

“I know.” I nod. “And he apologized—but we didn’t…” I close my eyes and rub my temples. “Tyler doesn’t want us to jump right back into being together. For now, we’re going to be friends and see if we can sort out our issues. We’re going to keep it casual.”

“Right. Casual.” Sadie rolls her eyes, but there’s a look there that’s more sympathy than annoyance. “Tyler wants you on the back burner while he goes to that stupid conference this weekend and does whatever he wants to do. But once school’s back in, he’s going to be trying to get back together with you.”

I don’t say anything. I start to lightly rub the building pressure in my chest.

Because she’s right. He does this every year, so he can go play single at the stupid pre-med conference and fool around with the same girl from Princeton who is clearly smarter and prettier and “higher class” than me—whatever that means.

Trying desperately to slow the train of thought, I spin and start to scrub the near-permanent stains beneath the lip of the espresso machine.

“Ro,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”

This I hate even more. Because my best friend—one of my friends—is worried about hurting my feelings in her defense of me. She’s the one friend I’ve made in the last three years who has stayed with me, through the ups and downs, through Tyler’s behavior and my mini breakdowns.

And I know Sadie enough now to know she won’t leave.

Loyal to a fault, like me.