Unloved: Chapter 25

We end up at the dorms after Ro gets a text from Sadie that she won’t be home.

She doesn’t tell me exactly what the text says, which only bothers me because I can it’s bothering her.

Protectiveness has never been my thing—with friends or girls. Clearly, I’ve never been good at taking care of them. But with Ro, the budding friendship I have with her feels important. And , I’m protective over.

Every light in their apartment-style dorm is off, but the TV plays music, currently “Young Folks” by Peter Bjorn and John at a medium volume. Ro walks in first, flicking on the mismatched lamps on their tables by the couch.

I follow her lead, sitting after she prompts me with one of the floor pillows on the pallet they’ve clearly constructed. She’s still standing, looking around nervously, before darting back into the kitchen area.

“Want some wine?” she asks, grinning as she reaches and pulls down two multicolored glasses.

“Sure.”

She pours from a bottle of white wine out of the fridge, carefully setting both glasses on the low coffee table and opening one of the pizza boxes on the floor.

I raise my cup. “To 1995’s best pizza in Massachusetts!”

I’m rewarded with an open, happy laugh that feels like the first rays of summer sun warming my body.

We clink our glasses together as she repeats my toast before we chat quietly and enjoy the food.

“So,” I say, polishing off my fourth slice of pizza, still on my first glass of wine. She steals one of my crusts from the pile I made her after lying about hating the crusts, and dunks it in the garlic sauce. “I may have grabbed us a surprise so we can both complete our ‘never have I ever’ task.”

Her hazel eyes twinkle, bright in the lamplight as we sit on the piles of pillows and blankets pulled down from the couch over the carpeted floor.

“What is it?”

I pull out the two colorful prizes from the machine from where I tucked them earlier, before grinning and juggling them lightly in my hand.

“Temporary tattoos.”

Her smile is near blinding.

“What are they of?”

“Didn’t look,” I say, and shrug. “Figure we could choose at random and put them on each other.”

“Really? You’d do it, too?”

I crinkle my brow. “I’m not letting you have all the fun without me, princess. Now, come on. Pick.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she grabs for the purple one, leaving the green plastic ball in my hand.

She pops it open to reveal a crown tattoo, silver and sparkly.

“Perfect,” I laugh, reaching for it. “A crown for a princess.”

She rolls her eyes at the tease but bumps my shoulder with hers. “What did you get?”

It’s amazing how free she seems. More than I’ve seen her before. Granted, she’s nearly polished off her second glass of wine, but she’s soft and smiley—not drunk. Calm and relaxed.

A version of Ro I don’t think I’ve ever seen.

I pop the lid on mine, sighing and shaking my head at the little tattoo in there.

“I can’t,” I groan. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“You promised,” she laughs, peering over my shoulder to see Hello Kitty staring up at us both.

“I know, I know.” I know exactly the look I’ll see on Holden’s face. I can nearly the jokes he’ll throw in the locker room until it washes off.

Something makes Ro pause.

“You don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to.”

“I know.” I fluff her hair affectionately, smiling at her with a shake of my head. “I want to. Promise.”

It seems to appease her, the smile I’ve been aiming for all day pleasantly back on her face. Making her happy, pleasing her, makes me—

Shaking my head, I stretch and push the nearly empty pizza box away.

“So, where do you—”

“You first,” she blurts before standing and running to the kitchen.

“Okay,” I say, pulling off my shirt and settling back on my forearms. “But you gotta promise to get it perfect, Rosalie. It’s bad enough showing up with Hello Kitty on my chest. Even worse if she’s all mangled on—”

I pause, because Ro has malfunctioned, standing completely frozen in the corner as she was reentering the living room.

Her eyes are wide and round, mouth slightly open and face blushing rapidly. It’s enough of a change that I press up to sit, anxiety rolling down my spine.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” she says, but it’s high-pitched and squeaky, which means it’s very much not nothing. “I just… you’re—you took off your shirt. I wasn’t prepared.”

I relax a bit and have to swallow down the urge to ask if she likes what she sees. I’m well aware of her weird relationship with Tyler Donaldson, one he’s made distinctly clear to me is none of my business. But it’s second nature for me to preen like a goddamn peacock at the slightest hint of attention.

“Sorry, Ro. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Because that’s what she’s feeling, right? Discomfort? “I was gonna have you put it on my chest, but—”

“No, no,” she says, stopping me, shaking her head, which seems to work like a reset button for her entire body as she darts forward, back onto our makeshift pallet with a bowl of hot water and a thin roll of paper towels. “Sorry. That was probably so weird. I’m… sorry, Matt. You’re unfortunately very handsome.”

“Unfortunately?” It makes me laugh. I’ve been told I’m attractive more times than I can count, but none of them quite so backhandedly.

“I’m not—” She shakes her head. “Sorry. I probably made you uncomfortable just now. You don’t have to do this to make me happy—”

“Trust me, Rosalie,” I say. “Nothing else I’d rather be doing.”

I get comfortable again, leaning back on my forearms while she kneels at my side.

She snickers, drawing my eyes back to her.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re splayed out like you got injured in a battle. And I”—she gestures to herself briefly, to the ceramic bowl and paper towels at her side—“look like I’m here to heal you. It’s all feeling very bodice ripper.”

My eyebrows shoot up as I repeat, “What?” But a lot louder, as her cheeks turn crimson.

“The books, with the ladies in dresses on the front and the shirtless men?” She bites down on her lip. “They’re called bodice rippers.”

“They’re sexy books?” I wink, suddenly interested in this hobby.

“Yeah, but they’re romantic.”

“You like them?”

I hate that she looks mildly shamed as she nods, dipping the paper towel into water and pressing it to my skin. “Yeah. I like all romance, but… I like those best. I used to have this massive collection of them.”

“You didn’t bring any here? I wanna see one.”

“I did, but—” She cuts off, eyes darting to the floor. “Um, actually most of them are gone. I think I have one; my favorite one.”

She gets up, stumbling a little, and I take over holding the paper towel to my pec.

The book in her hand is torn on the edges, worn and well loved. Maybe it was bright green at one time, but it’s faded to a soft sage now. She hands it to me delicately.

, the title scrolls across the cover, the bottoms of the letters brushing the overly chiseled chest of the half-naked man with long red hair, a kilt his only piece of clothing. He embraces a dark-skinned woman with a mass of curls, one hand on her hip, the other tangled in her hair.

“What’s it about?” I ask, biting down on the teasing smile that wants to appear. She looks too unsure, slightly hesitant for me to even hold the book, let alone look at it.

“It’s, um, a reformed rake story.”

My brows dip. “A what?”

“It means”—she clears her throat and plays with the end of the blanket beneath me as I flip the book over like I might read the back—“that the hero was a rake, a playboy, and he changes his ways to be with the heroine, because he loves her.”

Ro pauses and pulls on a strand of hair, a buzzing nervous energy around her.

“Keep going,” I say, intrigued.

“Well, um, in this one, everyone thinks Callan, the guy, is this womanizer. And Rosalina has been taken from her father to pay his debts, carted all the way to Scotland.”

I smile now, tilting my chin down so I can meet her eyes. “

, huh?”

She blushes. “It was the first time I saw something like my name, but that’s not the reason it’s my favorite. It’s—she’s scared at first, and when they auction her off—”

“They ?”

Ro is looking at me now, her finger to her mouth. “Let me finish. They auction her off and Callan puts in the most money—no one knows he would want to settle down. He can have any woman he wants, but no one understands that he’s lonely.”

My stomach hollows out a bit and I look back down at the shirtless man on the cover.

“But Rosalina does. Because she’s lonely, too.” Her lips press together and she tucks her hair back behind her ears. “To be loved is to be seen—and she’s the first person to really see him. That’s why they fall in love.”

It’s quiet, except for the music humming low in the background.

, I want to say, almost desperate to compare myself in some way to the oiled-up man that Ro clearly has a soft spot for.

Ro reaches to touch my hand, but only pulls the paper towel away from my skin, blowing lightly on the tattoo as I speak nearly into her hair.

“I… I liked to read. I mean— I like books. I couldn’t read well, as a kid.”

, I think, but refrain from saying. Even though I know she’s well aware now and would never tease me about it. “But my mom used to read to me. And then — I loved them.”

But then I got older and decided skating with my friends and blowing off my curfew was more fun than listening to my mom’s voice. And before I could get my brain fucking right, my mom got so sick she couldn’t hold her head up, let alone read me a fucking book, so I never finished any of the ones we started.

And now I won’t. Ever.

Clenching my jaw, I wait for the wave of grief to recede.

Ro looks up at me, not realizing how close we are. I can see the flecks of pure gold in the swirling moss of her eyes.

“Which one was your favorite?”

I smile. “

. I liked Samwise.”

Her eyes soften, like I’ve revealed some great truth about myself, and it’s so achingly tender I pull back before she can see something she doesn’t like if she looks too closely.

I don’t think I could weather her disapproval.

“Your turn, princess.”

We switch positions, and our movements are gentle, but skittish—both afraid of frightening each other if we go too quickly.

Mokita and Kaptan’s “Dreamer (Stripped Down)” plays softly as Ro settles beneath me, lying flat on the multicolored blankets like a patchwork background to her tawny skin, exposing the long column of her throat and her flushed skin.

“I want to put it here.” She gestures above her hip bone. “If that’s okay.”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

For a moment, I wish I wasn’t attracted to her. That everything I felt for her was friendship, because that would make this far easier.

Then I wouldn’t think about the way she shivers as I raise the fabric of her shirt. I wouldn’t notice the softness of her skin underneath my fingertips, the gooseflesh that fans out across her entire stomach as I press the damp paper towel to the tattoo. The audible puff of breath she releases as I blow lightly over the crown.

Trying to give myself room to breathe without begging her for a kiss—or even a fucking pat on the head at this point—I stand and discard the wrappers and pizza boxes, cleaning up our scattered mess.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For rescuing me so many times lately… with Tyler. I know that’s probably annoying—”

“It’s not.” I shake my head, stuffing the boxes into her too-full trash bag before tying it and setting it by the door to take it out when I leave. “It’s only annoying that he treats you like this. You deserve so much better. You’re amazing, Ro.”

I peek over at her, and see her arms lying over her eyes, her shirt still raised and showing where the crown shines like a beacon—high enough that I turn away almost immediately.

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m not so amazing, once you get to know me.”

Her words are a soft mumble, and when I ask her what she means, she doesn’t answer.

It’s quiet again as I finish cleaning up. I return to the pallet and sit by her side.

“When I was little,” I say, my tone low because her eyes are closed, “I used to ask my mom to read me the books from school. She would read them to me first, and then I would read them after her. She’d go through them over and over again with me, until I got every word perfectly.”

I can almost picture my mom as I speak, her comforting embrace around me as she turned the pages and softly corrected the words I missed.

“I know now I was memorizing more than I was learning to read better, but it didn’t matter. She it embarrassed me on our read-aloud days in school, so she made sure I felt confident before each one.”

How the world’s softest woman ended up with the worst narcissist alive always feels like some grand cosmic joke.

A deep sigh heaves out of me as I look down at a sleeping Ro.

“You remind me of her sometimes, especially when you teach me. I think you’re amazing and… and I hope you think you’re amazing, too.”

I should go, I to leave. But I can’t let her sleep on the floor like this.

So I stand, reaching my arms beneath her head and knees to pick her up, trying to be slow and not jostle her awake.

Her head lolls onto my chest, brow wrinkling as she mumbles beneath her breath.

“No, don’t. I’m a giant.”

I smile slightly. “You’re tall. But I’m taller.”

“And stronger,” she breathes, snuggling closer as I walk into her room. I feel like preening, puffing my chest a little.

“Yeah, princess. And stronger.”

I shoulder the door open, entering her room. It’s small and neat, but well lived in. The decor here lets me know she has a heavy hand in decorating the rest of her and Sadie’s apartment, with its bursts of colors and endless pillows and throw blankets.

I lay her on the bed, using one of the blankets hanging off the end to cover her. My heart feels like it’s gonna beat out of my chest, and the smile on my face is manic at best. But I can’t bring myself to care, not when she looks like that.

Soft, relaxed, and happy.

Turning to leave, I catch sight of a cardboard sign propped up on her desktop, next to a mini sewing machine, half covered by printed articles. A list, I realize, skimming over a few of the items:

A mix of handwriting, neat and scribbled, with little doodles and drawings.

And checkmarks, notably beside a few of the more sexual items on the list. There’s a pang in my chest, pressure that makes me rub at it. I know it was Tyler who did any of that with her, and I can’t help but hate him all the more for it.

I look away from the cardboard, back to Ro’s sleeping form, and blow a breath out. It’s easier to relax, to let it go, when I see her so vulnerable and trusting.

So I file the information away—that the list exists at all—into my Rosalie Shariff folder, and secretly hope that it’ll be next time drawing checkmarks in the margins with her.