Unloved: A Novel (The Undone)

It’s actually been awhile since I’ve done something this impulsive. But after yesterday’s meeting—and the gift I’d carried like a precious jewel into my room later that evening, tracing and retracing the embroidery—I want to do something for her.

So I’ve found the perfect place to take her today. Granted, asking her for her schedule or if she’s even free ahead of time might have been a better option, but after finding out how close the store was, I could barely sleep from the bubbling excitement.

I park outside her dorm and try calling her, but it goes straight to voicemail.

My brow furrows as I opt for a text.

FREDDY

Can you come outside for a minute?

I add a few emojis, until it looks minorly ridiculous. Her phone is on Do Not Disturb, but once she reads the text, the notification disappears and she’s typing.

PRINCESS

Are you at Millay right now?!?!?!

It’s her voice in my head as I read the text slowly. Her typing continues for a long moment, arguably too long for me, before a voice note comes through.

We often send each other voice notes instead of texts—she started it, but I adore them just as much. Not only is it easier for me, faster when I’m in a rush, but I’ve become quite addicted to the sound of her voice.

A few times—when I’ve had to go away for the whole weekend or miss a tutoring session for a two-a-day practice, and especially when studying for an upcoming exam—she sends me audio files to go over the missed topics. I’m sure the guys on the team bus think music is thumping through my ears. But it’s the voice of my favorite girl in the world.

“Heyyy,” she says, dragging out the word, sounding like her mouth is full as she steps away from the phone and back. “I figure this is easier—but what are you doing outside the dorms? You finished practice, like”—she pauses—“less than ten minutes ago. That’s crazy.”

A little giggle and then, “Anyway, I’m coming down. Let me just find my pants. Okay, be right there!”

There’s some rustling before the recording ends and I’m beaming, blushing a little from the unbidden image of Ro without pants—which I shake my head to clear.

Just in time, it seems, to spot a girl in a pretty lavender sweatshirt and pleated white tennis skirt skipping and scurrying down the steps of Millay to my idling car with the hazards on at the curb.

The same curb I dropped her off on the night she doesn’t remember.

I think you’d be really easy to love.

She stops at my rolled-down passenger-side window, leaning into it as she pops up on her toes and smiles at me.

“I couldn’t find pants,” she blurts before biting her lip and shaking her head like that wasn’t what she planned to say.

“I can see that,” I say, shifting in my seat. “Ready to go?”

Her hazel eyes widen. “Do I need to bring anything?”

“Just yourself. Hop in, Ro. We’ve got places to be.”

She acquiesces easily, pulling open the creaking door and sliding into the seat.

She doesn’t ask where we are going, just hooks up her phone to the aux cable like she’s comfortable here with me. Like she’s done this a million times, and settles back against the headrest while “Dizzy on the Comedown” by Turnover plays as I keep the windows rolled down and pull away from the curb.

Ro can’t get a word out, frozen in shock, while I watch her with a grin so big it hurts.

“We can go in whenever you’re ready.”

“How did you even find this?” Her voice is whisper soft, even though it’s just us and the car radio still playing music off her phone as it has for the hour-long drive. She didn’t question me once, no Where are we going? She didn’t even ask for a hint. Her trust is exhilarating.

I shrug. “I did some digging.” I spent all night searching for something to even slightly show my appreciation for what you’ve done for me. “I thought you’d like it.”

Eyes wide, she’s still staring at the faded yellow building smooshed between plain redbrick storefronts. The awning is green and white striped, with an old pink sign that reads In a Clinch. Painted across the window are the words Sweet, Spicy & Vintage Bodice Ripper Romance.

Ro stumbles a little into the front door, and I grab the loose brass handle to open it for her. The smell of old books mixes lightly with faint hints of tea, coffee, and butter from the little cafe nestled in the back.

I know it’s there because I called the owner.

Shockingly, the In a Clinch bookstore has little online presence. Opal is the store’s owner, whose number I found on a nearly empty business page after hunting it down. She was kind and sweet answering all my questions, offering more than enough information to know that making the drive with Ro would be worth it.

Just Ro’s reaction on seeing the little bookstore is enough to feed me for a lifetime.

Her fingers drift across the plastic-wrapped special editions displayed by the door, violin music playing overhead. She eyes a few signed editions up front before wandering toward the used books on the far wall.

“Hey, Ro,” I say, snagging her attention. “There’s a cafe in the back. I’m going to get us a coffee and chai if they have it, okay? Take your time looking around.”

Ro nods distractedly as her eyes continue to flicker around the room.

I find Opal in the back, a white-haired woman dressed in floral pastels with a gentle demeanor. We talk quietly, desperate to preserve the dreamy quality of Ro’s time.

Once Ro finishes—a large stack of books balanced in her hands—she joins us. Opal gushes over her choices, book by book, before offering a few suggestions of her own. They’re entranced by each other.

“Did you make this place?” Ro asks, complimenting her on every little detail. Opal smiles and shakes her head, grabbing a picture frame off the checkout counter and setting it between us.

“Sue,” she says, and points to the tall redheaded woman in the picture wearing bright burgundy lipstick. “She built this place for me. Her parents left it for her as a little cafe, a soda shop. We both loved to read, both loved romances. So when I moved away to New York to try and become a writer, she turned it into a bookstore. When my book finally came out, it flopped. But it was nearly a bestseller here, because of her.

“I moved back home and we got a cottage together. I kept writing and she kept expanding the store. It didn’t really flourish, but… I want to keep this place open for as long as I can. For her memory.”

“It makes you feel closer to her.” The words slip from my mouth unbidden, but Opal nods and smiles, patting my hand across the little wooden table.

“Exactly.”

Opal rings us up. I worked out payment in advance so Ro doesn’t even have the opportunity to try to pay for it.

I pile her copies, some new and some old, into the tote bag we’ve also purchased, setting the pastel pink bag on my shoulder and heading for the door with Ro behind me. She reassures me she’s ready to go every time I ask if she wants to stay a little longer when I catch her lingering.

“This is… the best thing anyone’s ever done for me,” Ro says, practically floating as she follows me out. “Seriously… I can’t believe this place even exists.”

Laughing, I open the car door for her and then the back door so I can pile her books carefully on the seat. Climbing in and starting the car, I smirk toward her again.

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“That was probably so boring for you,” she says, sidetracked as she pulls her phone out and takes a picture of one of the books she’s kept close to her. A pristine edition I recognize as the one she showed me before. Her phone goes off with a loud ringtone before she cuts it off with a double click and tries to take the picture again.

I shake my head. “Not at all. Seeing you look dreamily at shirtless men on book covers might be my new favorite pastime. Besides.” I shrug and look away from her. “I might’ve grabbed some audiobook CDs while we were there, so I could read your favorites.”

Marked in Fire is old enough that my options were a cassette tape that I didn’t have the system for or a CD that Opal managed to pull from her donation pile.

It felt like kismet.

I reach into the glove compartment, my arm grazing her exposed thigh, to pull the sage-green CD jewel case out and hand it to her.

She tosses her phone into a cupholder—a picture of Sadie, Liam, Oliver, and Ro all making funny faces lighting up the screen—as she grabs for the CD and examines it with a disbelieving laugh.

“No way—”

Persistent cell phone vibrations pull my attention to the cupholder as I turn onto the two-lane back roads to avoid the highway traffic. An unknown number with another area code I don’t recognize pops up on Ro’s screen. It rings a few times and then disappears, but Ro’s too distracted.

I ignore it, but it starts again. And again, from a new number every time.

“Someone’s calling you again,” I say, albeit unhelpfully, as I scratch at the back of my neck and pull to a stop at a red light.

She blushes and turns her phone away.

“It’s nothing; just leave it.”

Annoyed with her dismissive tone while there is clear fear in her eyes, feeling a little childish, I grab the phone and turn it back toward me. It stops ringing then, and I see Ro’s shoulders tense like she’s waiting for it to start up again.

It does, now resting in the palm of my hand. A different number calls right after, twice.

The phone is locked but the notifications scroll, endless calls—about five or six from each number, all with different area codes.

I feel a little sick, scrolling down the seemingly endless list. All from the last two days.

“Are these, like… I don’t know—scam calls?” I ask, knowing full well they aren’t, but having trouble piecing it together. “Ro, who is calling you from all these numbers?”noveldrama

“Matt,” she says, bottom lip trembling. “The light’s green.”

Least of my problems, I think, but pull into the empty parking lot of a closed laundromat right next to us, throwing the car in park.

“What’s going on, Ro?”

She raises her hands like she wants to reach for me, but also wants to protect herself. She settles for hugging herself around the middle and my stomach drops. “He does it to bother me—”

He?

“Tyler?” I ask, a little disbelief peppering my tone. “All of these are him?”

“Usually.” She nods reluctantly, like she’s the one doing something wrong.

“Rosalie, this is fucking harassment. It’s illegal—you have to report him.”

“He didn’t hurt me—he does this sometimes when he’s trying to get my attention. Keeps making more profiles online or using other numbers. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Her voice breaks and I feel like I can’t breathe.

“Princess,” I rasp, voice barely escaping the tightness of my throat. I open the car door and circle the idling car, ripping her door open a little too hard. “Come here.”

She steps out of the car and melts into my arms. I tuck her too tightly against me, pressing kisses into her curls as I rub circles into her back and swallow back the fury and anger that’s coursing through my body.

The phone rings again and I can’t stop myself from grabbing for it, stepping back from her huddled form so that my fury doesn’t infect her.

“What the fuck do you want, asshole?”

The pause is long, drawn out, before “Is this not Ro’s number?” comes from a voice I’d know blind.

“Rhys?”

“Freddy?” He chokes.

I’m far enough from Ro that she can’t really hear me, but she can see the confused worry on my face. “What? It’s—what’s wrong?” she asks, approaching me.

I bite my lip, desperate to soothe her anxiety. “We’re, um, studying right now.” Hand to the mic like I can block it, I whisper to Ro, “It’s just Rhys, princess, I can handle it.” Then, back to Rhys, I fire off my main concern—why the fuck is he calling Rosalie?

“Why am I—” He matches my irritation. “Sadie wants me to bring her brothers to Ro at the dorms.”

This time she hears him and I can’t stop the clear guilt that washes over her. So I yield to her, handing off the phone.

“Hey. Sorry, I’ve been having a problem with spam calls.” My fists tighten, jaw clenching tighter. “Um. I can—” She looks around, as if she’s suddenly remembered how far away we are. “I won’t be back for a few hours. Shoot.”

Rhys says something in his usual comforting way. It soothes her, and I hate the irritation at my friend that subconsciously rises. Rhys and Bennett are both the calm to your chaos. How would you ever be soothing to her?

The phone call ends and she gazes up at me slowly.

“I think we should go home.”

My eyes shutter as I agree, despite the ache in my heart that wants to turn the car around, drive her back to that little pastel bookshop, and keep her away from everything that hurts.