Unloved: Chapter 42

I’m not in my bed. That’s the first thought that swirls through my head when I wake up.

I rub my eyes furiously with one hand, the other reaching and fumbling across silky sheets until my phone is in my hand. I look at the screen:

Someone’s hand crawls across my chest, nails sporting a perfect French manicure sliding over the bare skin, down, down, down toward my hip bone before I grab the bracelet-clad wrist.

A sinking feeling hits my gut as I turn my head to see Carmen Tinley, wrapped in a sheet with mascara flecks on her cheeks, smile bright and seductive all at once.

I’ve been here before, several times, but this feels…

It’s always been fucking wrong—

“I’m glad you’re here, sweets,” she whispers, and for a moment it feels good—to know that for I did something right. That I pleased her. That I was enough for—

“How did I get here?” I ask, raising myself up to lean against the headboard and rubbing my eyes. A deep ache has already settled between them.

She chuckles patronizingly, rising out of the bed and sliding on a robe matching her usual black silk set. “Someone got a little too crazy at the Howler last night.”

The Howler.

God fucking damn it.

It shouldn’t be that much of a shock that I sought comfort in the one place I vowed to never step foot in again. Specifically, the Howler, a dive bar nestled between Waterfell and Boston, somehow in both cities and neither at the same time. I think I was their youngest patron when I first showed up there freshman year, trailing behind my professor like a dog on a chain. I was probably still their youngest patron last night, considering the significantly older clientele of regulars.

Carmen and I utilized the spot for dates because she couldn’t be seen with me in Waterfell. At the time, I thought it was because I was a student. I never imagined she might be embarrassed of me.

Or married.

But I was a game to her, probably the easiest she ever played.

Thinking about myself then, about what I did, the things I was so desperate for that I debased myself time and again, makes the nausea churn higher, so I shake my head and focus on what I can remember.

Which is nearly nothing.

“How did I get here?”

“They called me to pick you up.”

That does not make me feel any better.

“Did we…”

“No, Freddy—we didn’t sleep together. You didn’t want to. Didn’t even try to kiss me,” she says condescendingly, stepping to where I’ve swung my legs over the side of the bed to stand. “You were embarrassingly drunk.”

I scowl a little, peering up at where she broods over me. “I was drunk a lot.”

But…

, her words echo. I said no to her—I didn’t cheat…

God, my head is spinning.

“We were… together, then. We aren’t now—it’s different,” she says, her tone the same one she’s used with me forever, like she’s correcting a wayward child.

And for a second, it’s that same frustration and burning, the same weird feeling that used to flow through me as a freshman, grief ridden and angry, with the permission to take power from this woman with so much power over me—and be praised for it.

“

” Ro’s voice plays like my favorite record on a loop in my head, building me up brick by brick again. “

”

“How’s it going with Ro?”

It all crashes back down.

I feel sick, so much so I press up and brush half-naked past Carmen to the bathroom, hating the three steps it takes to get there. Hating even more that I know where it is, the familiarity of this situation.

“Fine,” I blurt out, leaning over the sink. I wish I didn’t have to say , but I know that I have to say something. There’s an insistent need to defend Ro, especially to Carmen. Especially in the aftermath of what I’ve done.

This Splashing cool water on my skin doesn’t help, and I feel like my head is swimming—like I can’t get enough air in, because I’m panicking, and I can’t get one thought to stick long enough to decide what to do.

“Must be going well. Randall told me you begged him to call her and not me.”

Randall, the bartender who probably called Carmen.

Carmen leans against the door, twisting and untwisting her smooth red hair. There was a time where this much nearness, the feeling that she to talk to me beyond the sex, would’ve had me doing tricks for an extra treat.

Now, my shoulders tense, freezing like a cornered deer in the spotless marble bathroom.

“I was so sad to hear she and Tyler broke up; they were a real power couple.”

My grip on the sink tightens.

I don’t say a word—I probably wouldn’t if I could. Even the thought of talking about Ro with Carmen makes my knees weak.

, did I drink enough to have some kind of alcohol poisoning?

“But it looks like things are working out for you two?”

My head whips toward her. “What?”

Carmen looks a little struck by my reaction and I close my eyes, trying a breathing exercise or a dozen.

“You’re… Freddy, you’re passing. That’s incredible for you.”

As it usually goes with Carmen, all her compliments are gently backhanded.

“I should go,” I mumble, my limbs starting to feel numb.

“Freddy.” She tsks. “So sensitive.”

It still chafes just as hard, like sandpaper on a bleeding wound that hasn’t closed since that day on the front porch of the damn house I’m currently inside.

If she notices the color leaching from my face at her mocking tone, she doesn’t say a word, continuing right on.

“I’m only asking as her friend. Tyler mentioned she’s been difficult on their cohort… Has she seemed different to you?”

“What?” A flare of anger on Ro’s behalf centers me again and I find myself grateful for it.

“Ro— She’s been different lately. More assertive, but she’s causing some waves with the boys on my team.”

I want to roll my eyes—Carmen Tinley wouldn’t take another girl’s side if it was a life raft out at sea. She’d rather drown waiting for a group of young fishermen to be at her beck and call.

“She’s a great tutor,” I say. “Better than Tyler ever was.”

She snaps and her eyes brighten. “Oh, that’s right! He was your tutor sophomore year. You know that’s when they started dating?”

I’m not surprised she knows. Carmen has always had a too-close relationship with her students, toeing the line of what’s appropriate, but moderating it by being so well liked. I remember drunkenly trashing her in a review online, annoyed with her near-perfect score and the amount of anonymous accounts calling her .

“Don’t care.” I shake my head. “But he’s not fond of me and has made that crystal clear.”

I might as well have said he helped me pass astrophysics with the way she reacts, laughing and nodding.

“I—oh.” Her head swivels toward the bed and she steps away, returning with my phone in her hand. “You’re getting another phone call.”

“I need to take it.”

She smiles, and I feel nothing beyond the sinking ball of guilt and regret in my stomach.

“I’ll make you some coffee before you go, sweets.”

I flinch again at the haunting nickname but wait with a clenched jaw until she’s gone before answering.

“Ro?”

“Goddamn it, Freddy.” Bennett’s gruff voice growls through the speaker. “Where the fuck are you?”

Shame threatens to overwhelm me. “I’m— I’m, I’m—”

“We had practice this morning and you, what? Slept in?” He lets out a long breath and I can almost see his thumb and forefinger start to massage his brow. “Are you at least with Ro?”

“What? No—wait, why?”

“He’s not with her,” he calls, away from the speaker. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong with Ro? What’s going on, Ben?” The panic claws my throat.

“We don’t know,” he mutters. “But she left voicemails for Rhys and Sadie last night in a panic saying she was worried about you and that she was getting a ride to you at the house, but she never showed, and no one has heard from her.”

Dread curls in my stomach, and I feel a bit like I’m drowning. My hand trembles as I pull the phone away from my ear and click to her unopened texts—

“Freddy?” Carmen enters the room and pads over to hand me a coffee. “Everything okay?”

“Is that Ro?” Bennett asks.

“No,” I grit into the speaker. I hear Bennett curse before he hangs up on me. But his disappointment stays with me long after.

Her text thread taunts me on the bright screen of my phone.

My stomach swoops at that one, but I shake my head and continue slowly. The texts are hard enough to read, but add my pounding heart and thunderous headache and they’re nearly indecipherable.

I click out of the messages, seeing mostly the same sentiments over and over. Like she was trying to soothe me while I was unreachable.

While I was drinking myself into a stupor and sleeping in Carmen Tinley’s expensive bed.

If I got rid of any of it before, the self-hatred is back in droves as I grab my jeans and shirt off the floor before calling a too-expensive Uber to take me straight to campus.