The Unrequited Read online

  “Sarah. Want to join us?”

  Her shrewd eyes flicker between Thomas and me, and I feel anxious, like I’ve been caught doing something wrong, something illicit.

  “No thank you. I—”

  “Are you sure? We were having an illuminating discussion about gender roles. Do girls really hit like girls or is it merely a stereotype created by modern literature?”

  My breath hiccups as Thomas refers to my stomping so smoothly. I try to school my features, but I know I’m blushing. I hope the dim lighting conceals it.

  “I’m sure it’s fascinating,” Sarah says in a suspicious tone. “But you’re needed inside.”

  Thomas smiles but I can tell he isn’t amused. “And who’s doing the needing? You? I thought the day would never come.”

  Sarah throws him a strained smile. Clearly, these two don’t like each other.

  “I like your jokes, Thomas, but I don’t think Professor Masters will be amused to be kept waiting. He wants everyone to meet the stellar addition to our staff.”

  “Well, I’ll be right in then.”

  Sarah nods, ready to leave, but stops. She focuses on me and I shrink inside my big, giant coat. “Are you new? I’ve never seen you on the Labyrinth night before.”

  “Um, yes. I am. I’m Layla Robinson.”

  She nods. “I’m Sarah Turner. If you need any help with gender roles in literature, you should come find me. It’s one of my specialties.”

  Again, her gaze switches to Thomas, and then it flicks back over to me. There isn’t anything in her eyes that I can decipher, but still, I feel there is something there. With a last glance at us, she leaves, and the breath I’ve been holding whooshes out. “Who’s she?”

  Thomas shrugs, whipping out his phone from his pocket. “No one.” His fingers fly as he types something. Once done, he heads toward the street.

  “You’re leaving?” I ask.

  “Looks like it,” he replies without turning around.

  “But shouldn’t you go in there?”

  “I wish I could, but I don’t want to.”

  He keeps walking and I jog after him. “Why not?” I’m pushing it but I don’t know why.

  Halting in his tracks, he turns around. The night is dark and the lighting is atrocious so I can’t really study his expression, but I know he doesn’t like being questioned. “Because it’s almost midnight and if I stay any longer, I might turn into a toad, and I like this getup too much to risk that.”

  He turns back around but pauses again. Giving me his profile, he says, “And I haven’t forgotten, Miss Robinson—don’t be in my class next time.”

  Emma moves in the next day and it goes smoothly with Dylan and Matt and me helping her. Plenty of heated glances are exchanged between the two lovebirds, and I couldn’t be happier. Turns out, after I left last night, there was a hug with a kiss and an all-nighter where they talked and got their feelings out.

  At lunchtime, we order pizza and discuss all things poetry. I ask about Sarah Turner, and Emma tells me she was gunning for Thomas’ job. Apparently it was all pretty much set until Jake Masters, dean of creative writing, brought Thomas in to attract more students to the program, hence Sarah’s hostility; not to mention, Jake and Thomas have known each other since their college days, and, naturally, Sarah doesn’t like that.

  It’s a fun afternoon, except for one heated phone call from Emma’s mom. She goes into her room to talk so I can’t hear what they are arguing about. Dylan calms her down though and from there, things get light.

  Dylan, Emma, and Matt accept me easily. Apart from a few awkward silences where Dylan and Emma make googly eyes at each other, it feels natural—so natural, in fact, that Matt kind of becomes my favorite person in the world because he loves Twizzlers. We share a pack between us and argue its nutritional values against crappy foods like apples or leafy vegetables. By the end of it all, I decide I really want these fragile bonds of friendships to hold. Loneliness doesn’t feel like an option anymore, not since I stumbled upon the Labyrinth.

  ________________

  Once Dylan and Matt are gone, Emma suggests a walk and coffee. I never say no to either of those, so I pile on my winter clothes and we set out into the quiet Sunday afternoon.

  The street is wet and flanked by melting banks of snow. It hasn’t snowed since the semester started so the air seems saturated, swollen with the nightmare of it. We pass by the neighboring buildings, which are smaller than the one we live in, a salon, and a deli before getting to Crème and Beans. The smell of coffee and warm chocolate hits us as we enter.

  But it’s more than that. There’s a potency in the air, and I instantly know why. Thomas. He is at the counter, paying for his coffee. He is so tall that he has to lean down to speak to the barista. His fingers flick through the bills in his wallet as he counts them, and hands them over with a distracted smile.

  Last night I became his puppet again and played with myself. This time I did it in darkness. It made the strings tighter, more urgent. It made me bolder, dirtier. Criminal, even. Unlike the last time, my fingers plunged in and dug deep, felt the flesh from inside out. It was warm and velvety and dripping and noisy. I heard the sounds my pussy makes when it’s greedy and horny. I never knew. I never knew that part of my body so intimately. It felt brilliant and shameful. I basked in my arousal until I was gasping for breath, gushing cum on my purple sheets. I was writhing on my bed with no control over my body whatsoever. It was scary and erotic as fuck.

  “Hey, you coming?” Emma calls out, bringing me out of my lust-induced trance.

  Her voice is loud in the otherwise empty café and it snags Thomas’ attention. In a flash, his relaxed stance changes and he is on alert, his jaw pulsing. His reaction is so predictable, his hatred so glorious that I bite my lip to keep from smiling.

  My smile is lost when I notice he isn’t alone. There’s a woman a few steps behind him in a loose white sweater and a soft pink coat. Her hair is blonde and smooth with layered bangs falling over her forehead. She is petite, shorter than my five feet six inches, and a lot thinner than me.

  Even though I’ve never seen her, I know who she is. She is Thomas’ wife.

  She is beautiful. So perfect. Ethereal. Like a soft feather or a soap bubble. Her skin is silky and her lips are pure pink. She seems the total opposite of me. Shy, quiet, and well-mannered.

  Having seen them too, Emma makes a beeline in their direction. “Hi, Professor Abrams. It’s so nice to see you here.”

  “Yes. Pleasure,” he replies without enthusiasm.

  Emma introduces herself to Thomas’ wife with a polite smile. “Um, hi, I’m Emma Walker and this is Layla Robinson. We’re in Professor Abrams’ class.”

  “Hello. I’m Hadley,” she says with a slight smile. Her voice…I can’t even describe it. It’s the tiniest of sounds, the lowest of decibels, and so…melodic.

  I bet Thomas fell in love with her at first sight. How could he not have? She inspires that kind of devotion.

  There’s a clench in my chest, as if my heart is shrinking. I wonder what it takes to be loveable. Maybe you have to be less crazy or less selfish or less…ruining.

  I swallow and try to smile as Hadley’s golden gaze reaches me. I feel ashamed. It’s the same feeling I had last night with Sarah. I want to hide behind Emma. My harmless crush seems not so harmless anymore.

  With reluctance, Thomas jumps into introductions, moving closer to Hadley. “Yes, this is my wife, and that little guy over there is Nicky—Nicholas, our son.”

  Did he just say son? A son.

  He has a son. A child. He’s a dad.

  This is getting worse by the minute. Let’s hide, my frantic heart squeaks. I’ve been masturbating to thoughts of a man who has a son.

  A son I can’t stop staring at.

  A blue-eyed, dark-haired baby with rosy cheeks. He’s kicking up his feet in a stroller, gurgling over his chubby fist. He’s bundled up in a black and white beanie and scarf with a puffy purple
jacket. He’s wearing purple. My favorite color.

  “Oh my God, he’s so cute.” Emma comes down to her knees. “And so tiny. How old is he?”

  “Six months next week,” Thomas answers.

  He is watching Nicky with pride, with tenderness. It’s a look I’ve never seen on him before. It softens the chisels of his face, tempers the perpetual intensity in his eyes. It makes him look young, happy. His fingers graze Nicky’s head gently, reverently.

  My gaze lands on Hadley. Maybe the sunrays are hitting her wrong, but I swear I see…apprehension on her face as she looks at Nicky. Her soft lips are turned down and dark bags have erupted under her eyes. I don’t understand her reaction. She snaps her gaze away as if she can’t look at Nicky or her husband anymore.

  I dismiss the stupid thought and turn to Emma. She is playing with Nicky, trying to get him to hold on to her finger, but he isn’t biting. I kneel next to her and smile at him and instantly, he looks at me.

  His eyes are blue, much like his dad’s. I finger-wave at him. “Hi Nicky, I’m Layla.” He wiggles on his cute butt and drools. “I love your jacket. It’s purple.” I grin, and he shoots me a toothless grin of his own. “Do you know purple is my favorite color? I just love it. Look!” I point to my jacket and he looks dutifully, still chewing on his fist. “I’m wearing purple too, though it’s a different shade. But, you know, purple’s cool in any shade.”

  He giggles as if he understands. Chuckling, I finger-wave at him again, this time close to his soft button nose. In a flash, he catches my finger in his wet fist, beaming.

  I circle my lips in an O and he mimics my action, drool hanging on to his chin. “You caught me!”

  “Why didn’t he grab my finger?” Emma whispers.

  “I’m way cooler than you.”

  We both make to stand up but I pause as my gaze falls on Thomas’ boots. They’re the same ones from last night, black with grey soles. They point toward Hadley’s maroon, low-heeled boots, but hers are pointed to the opposite side, to the door. I picture the toes of Thomas’ and my boots touching, pointing dead center, like a compass.

  Something about the opposite direction of their boots strikes me as wrong. It gives me a bad feeling.

  I sense a hot prickle on my scalp, tingling down to my neck and spine. I know Thomas is staring down at me with his gorgeous eyes. My body tightens as I come up to my feet and look at him. There’s a microsecond of connection between us, and suddenly, I get it. I get the hidden depths of his eyes. I get the sharpness of his expression, every purse of his lips, every throb of his vein.

  I get everything. I get why he didn’t look like the happiest man alive last night.

  I even get his poem. Anesthesia is about loneliness, heartbreak, one-sided love. It’s about him, and it’s about me. It’s about people like us.

  My heart is racing with the awful, awful knowledge.

  Just then, Nicky’s gurgles morph into fussing. His chubby cheeks shake as he chews on his knuckles. His distress is causing me distress, and I’ve only met him a few minutes ago.

  Emma looks down, frowning. “Oh no, I guess he needs his mommy.”

  I swear I see Hadley flinch. What is going on?

  Thomas notices it too and breaks into action. Setting his mug on the counter, he bends down and gathers Nicky in his arms. He presses him to his chest, cradling his head and rocking him. His movements are expert and fluid.

  “I think we should get going. It’s close to Nicky’s feeding time, anyway,” Thomas says.

  We say our goodbyes and Thomas and Hadley leave. As Emma places her order with the barista, I watch them walk down Albert Street. They walk separate from each other, aloof. Thomas is pushing the stroller and Hadley is huddled in her coat, tucking her flying blonde hair behind her ears. She slips on a patch of ice and Thomas’ hand shoots out to steady her, but it never makes contact with her body. Hadley shrinks away at the last second and straightens herself. She continues walking as if nothing happened, and Thomas follows.

  With a sinking heart, I realize Thomas is like me. He is the unrequited lover.

  ________________

  For the past weeks, Thomas has claimed my nights. He is all I think about, but tonight is different. Tonight, Caleb is intruding on Thomas. The awful, breath-stealing, gut-wrenching love that I feel for him is rushing to the surface.

  In my mind, I see purple flowers, the same ones I saw through the window of that strange house Caleb left me in.

  Most days I don’t think about those flowers, but tonight I can’t stop thinking about them. I can’t stop thinking about how beautiful they were and how I hated seeing them when I was at my worst. I hated them for being so pretty and delicate. The agony is multiplied a thousand-fold, as if I’m sad for not only myself, but someone else too.

  Turns out, Thomas Abrams isn’t a mystery anymore. He’s just a man in love with someone who doesn’t love him back. It demystifies everything about him, and it breaks my heart in a million ways. I pick up his book and read the poem again. I lick his words as if I’m licking his soul, his heart, his wounds.

  Now that I know this about Thomas, the allure should be gone…but it’s still there. It makes me want to run and run until I find him and ask him, What does it feel like? Are you as lonely as me? As lost and angry? Are you insane like me?

  My agony, curiosity, anger, heartbreak…everything pours out of me onto a blank piece of paper. My trembling fingers fly and I write my very first poem.

  For Thomas.

  The Bard

  Love is a scary thing. It’s too powerful, too awe-inspiring, too life-changing for a man like me. I’ve seen it. I’ve believed in it, but I never wanted it for myself.

  But when I saw her, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what I thought, what I wanted. At the first sight, I fell.

  Hadley.

  She was walking down the corridor, her arms laden with books, her honey blonde hair fluttering in the air. A frown marred her forehead. All I wanted to do was rub my thumb between her eyebrows and erase it. There was something about her that spoke to me. Maybe it was the way she walked, huddled, shrunken into herself, or it could have been her parted lips, dragging in air out of exertion. Whatever it was, it called to something inside me, something I didn’t know I had—a sort of protective instinct, perhaps. She passed me by without sparing me a glance, without knowing how she shifted my world with that one frown.

  Years later, I still feel the same. I see the bunched lines between her brows and downturned angles of her mouth, and I want to crush the source of her distress.

  Trouble is, this time it’s me.

  I put those lines on her beautiful face. They rest when she’s silent, simply listening to what Grace, Jake’s wife, is saying to her, but they come alive when she throws Grace a tight smile.

  Hadley has lost weight, the shine of her skin is gone, and the dark bags under her eyes give her a haunted, weak look. These outward signs make me feel helpless, angry—at myself, at the world, I don’t know.

  A distinct pain originates in the back of my skull and travels up my scalp. I know it won’t be long before my head is full-on aching.

  “You okay, man?” Jake thumps his hand on my shoulder.

  We are at Jake and Grace’s house for dinner. It’s sort of a welcome-to-the-neighborhood kind of thing. Hadley and Grace are busy in a conversation at the kitchen island, though it’s mostly Grace talking; Hadley is a listener. Jake and I are here, occupying the couch in the living room.

  The chill of the beer bottle seeps into my overheated fingers as I take a long pull, looking away from my wife. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”

  “You can talk to me, you know. I’m here for you.” His eyes move from me to Hadley and back again.

  My teeth grit at his interference. It’s not interference, I tell myself. Jake is the kind of a guy who’d be concerned, but I’m not the type to share. Words have the power to make things true. Just like some people don’t talk about their nightmares
because it might make them come true, I don’t want to discuss what’s wrong in my life, in my marriage.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Everything’s fine.”

  Jake senses my unease and lifts his hands in surrender. “Okay. No pressure.” He takes a sip of his own beer. “So Sarah pretty much hates you.”

  Glad for the subject change, I say, “Sarah pretty much hates everyone.”

  “Yes, but not everyone argues with her at staff meetings, and not everyone points out—and I quote—‘how shitty the syllabus is.’ That’s all you.”

  “It is shitty.”

  “You’re not going to make my job easier, are you?” He shakes his head, growing serious. “You can’t pull stuff like this now, Thomas. You can’t text me and dash out when I want to introduce you to people. You can’t insult your colleagues. You aren’t a poet anymore. You’re a teacher. A team player.”

  Not a poet.

  Jake didn’t mean anything by it, but it needles me all the same. The throbbing in my skull intensifies, on the verge of exploding with a thousand thoughts. It makes me feel tired, exhausted—the feeling I get when I’ve labored over a poem for hours, polishing it, chiseling it until it shines…or until I can’t work on it anymore because all my words have dried up.

  “Yeah. I know.” I sigh, running my hand through my hair. “I know you’re doing me a favor, man. I don’t mean to piss all over it. It won’t happen again.”

  And I mean it. If this job rights all the wrongs I’ve done, I’ll take it.

  “Good.” Jake salutes me with his bottle. “How are the students? We got a decent batch this year, right?”

  As if Jake’s question is a trigger, I see her in flashes, as if my consciousness has clicked snapshots of her without my knowledge. Impish, wild, violet-colored eyes. Loud, uninhibited laughter. Smoke threading out of her pouty lips. The savage, dark curls that never seem to stay still. Her purple fur coats—who wears fur coats, anyway? Her voice that digs up the buried words inside me. Merciless words. They make me forget I’m not a poet anymore.