I usually don't write Una, heck I generally don't write much about Walter either. But Taylor Swift Songs tends to pull out things I never imagined in my writing.
I will add a small warning that this is a story that does contain vague mentions of a medical abortion and suicidal thoughts. I try to be non-descript with it in writing as the actual words are never once written.
If this story is not for you, then walk away and don't look back.
Taylor Swift- You all over Me
'So I lied, and I cried
And I watched a part of myself die
'Cause no amount of freedom gets you clean
I've still got you all over me'
Una knew Una Marie knew that she had to do it. How she cold she not? Ruin her family? Put her father in some sort of scandal in the church? No, that would never happen.
She would do what she needed to do. She would figure out how to go on and move on from him. Move on from pining for Walter Blythe, the guy who never noticed her unless she was standing in front of him practically naked. Even then, it wasn't what she wanted, it was always something on the edge of friendship, but it never crossed the line into something real for him at least.
She looks down at the two little white pills in their packet, staring back at her she took a deep breath and popped the first one.
She looked back up in the mirror her dark hair falling like a thick curtain, her dark blue eyes hollow with dark circles.
She had no choice, it didn't feel like she had any other option.
Not with Walter with another girl now, she hoped she prayed that boring afternoon would have solidified things. It would have made him see her as more than just that friend.
But it never did, she was just Una to him. She wasn't girlfriend material to him. He made that abundantly clear a few days after, watching him grin in the hallways of their college
"Selena said yes!" He exclaimed. "She's going to get coffee with me."
She almost dropped the books she was holding. She forced a smile and told him that she was happy for him.
It tore her apart.
Their tryst, her declaration of what he meant to her, meant nothing to him. Of all the beautiful poetry he could write, he was clueless and it was torture to her soul. That day was just a cure for winter boredom when playing making out became something else for the first time. She gave him everything and he gave her nothing in return.
If her father knew, her family knew they would all be ashamed of her. Thankfully she was eighteen, they didn't need to know her private business.
She thought it would stop hurting by now, that the ache in her heart would leave her. She would move on, push their time together aside like it never even happened.
Move on and forget.
Still, the photos haunt her phone, her social media. All through high school, she pined for him. The memory of that day in June, when his family invited them over for dinner when they were new to the community. He was gawky and quiet and she sat next to him with a book in her hands.
From that day they formed a silent friendship since she was fourteen and he was freshly sixteen.
It was always the same, she was an old soul, she wasn't like his kid's sisters obsessed with boys and make-up. Una Meredith was a rare soul he told her once in the quiet of the library one rainy afternoon. He never talked about other girls, and the boys of the school teased him for his poetic ways. Sports were not his thing and being a poet wasn't something the pretty blondes that were their classmates were into.
They went to dances together, they went to prom together because who else would they go with? They kissed occasionally, in-between flings with other people. Always trying to be available when he would be available. Hoping that one day he would realize that she had meant it when she was sixteen when she told him that she loved him.
The photos on her vanity haunt her as she rips them from the mirror. It wasn't fair. It wasn't!
She had given him everything,
She thought it would wake him up, see that everything he daydreamed and wanted was in front of him.
She sees him in school the next day, she ducks into the woman's washroom before he can make his way over to her. She doesn't want to see him, the other pill is in her purse waiting for her to take.
She was going to wait until the end of her test, but she grabbed it and swallowed it hastily. There was no turning back now.
"Una, I swear if I didn't know any better you are avoiding me," his voice jovially as if he was teasing her when she tried to leave the washroom.
Una finds herself faking a smile. "Sorry just need to pee," she tells him. "I really have to get to class though we have a test."
"I'll walk with you, I have so much to tell you!" He tells her falling into step beside her. She wants to scream at him, she wants to tell him that she wants to be alone.
"Una is everything all right?" He asks breaking into her thoughts?
Is everything all right? Of course, it wasn't! Nothing was right anymore and she didn't know how much longer she could stand playing this game, being his backup plan. That she was one pill away from being free from him forever at this point.
Instead, she fakes a smile.
"Yeah just thinking about my study notes, it's been a busy few weeks." Una finds herself lying to him. "I'll see you around," she fights the urge to kiss his cheek like old times when she sees her classroom.
She slides into her usual chair at her usual table and lays her head down on her books. Would this ever be over? Should she transfer schools? Move to another city? Go live with her Aunt across the country?
She brushes her black hair from her face and checks her complexion in a small compact mirror. Her dark blue eyes were still haunted as she wiped around some smudged mascara.
She manages to avoid him, but when she comes home his younger sister is making out with her younger brother on the couch. Rilla Blythe was flighty and only 14.
"Seriously," she says to them in passing. "I don't think this family needs any more connections to each other." She tells them.
"You only say that because you got rejected," Carl shoots back at her shakes her head and goes up to her small room. Hearing Rilla asks Carl what he meant by rejected.
The Blythe and Merediths were known for dating Jem and Faith been dating since high school. Even Jerry and Nan had dated for a while before going to separate colleges, though still kept in touch.
She cries silently in her room. She had the weekend to hide away, to feign being ill from her period that had not come. Her phone is filled with texts from him and she just wants it to stop. She goes to Twitter and tweets one of the most depressing poems she could, maybe she could get him to see what he was doing to her?
Yeats, and Keats, anything and everything that came to mind as she tweeted her pain and agony.
Maybe he would see what he was doing to her?
The cramps begin with a twinge and then an onslaught that became a vengeance. They had warned her, told her to take some pain relief if needed but to watch for clots that were larger than a certain size and if she was bleeding more than a pad an hour.
She curls up with a heating pad and Netflix on her computer. Waving off Rosemary's offer for help. She just wants to be alone, she needs to be alone.
She finds herself over-heating and feeling faint the next day and by the evening she feels delirious. Her stomach is in knots as she throws up in the toilet. Her father shakes his head and grabs his keys. She shook her head, anyone but him, anywhere but there. She couldn't face that place knowing Doctor Blythe would know her secret. No one could know her secret, and definitely not him. He would have stepped up, to do the right thing and that isn't what she had wanted. She wanted him to want her, to love her as she loved him. Except her never would it wouldn't be fair to make him.
So she did the only thing that made sense, even if it hurt her in the process.
Still, she's bleeding far too much, her father is trying to tell a nurse things he doesn't know. She stumbles and takes a pen from the nurse and writes something on the chart, trying to hide it from her father.
The nurse sees her writing and nods her head before her vision goes black.
She wakes up to an IV and her father and stepmother sitting beside her.
"Why didn't you tell us?" He asks, he doesn't sound angry, he sounds heat broken that his daughter couldn't ask for help "Did you think we would throw you out or be angry. We could have helped you?"
"No one could know, " Una says weakly. "He couldn't know because I couldn't face him. I couldn't face you, I couldn't be the daughter you couldn't control to your congregation. I couldn't put your job at risk."
"My role as a father always trumps my role as a reverend," Mr. Meredith tells her. "I could never hate you, Una, never no matter what you did. You did what you thought was best for you and I have to respect that."
"They stopped the bleeding and gave you antibiotics," Rosemary tells her. "The doctor will be around to talk to you more, but I think you will be all right?"
Una finds her nodding her head. Rosemary is right, the doctor does come and it's not Doctor Blythe thankfully. She'll make a full recovery, and no permanent damage should be worried about. She may be weak for a little while as she lost a fair amount of blood.
Her father passes her two days in the hospital as something else. A sudden illness, because of course everyone finds out. It's a small community, and of course, he visits, and she pretends to sleep to avoid him.
The next Sunday, her father preaches about forgiveness. To sin isn't the end, that the Lord is always willing to forgive his flock. That sin should not be looked down upon, or be ostracized. Sin is normal and forgiveness is the key. That parents should guild their children but not overreact when their child does something that they consider wrong.
Forgiveness and Love are what children need to live a Christian life.
She finds her body healing faster than her mind. It is done, but long from forgotten. She learns different routes to her classes and avoids him, which is easier and easier and he spends more of his time with the girl of his dreams.
She still cries but it's less these days.
She still looks in the mirror feeling haunted by her choices and where they had brought her. She couldn't escape them, not here, not ever it felt like some days.
She takes a deep breath as she plunged into the cooling water of her bath.
How long would it take?
What would it take to not feel as she did?
How long would it take to be clean of him?
Her eyes opened stinging from the soapy water as she struggle. Bubbles, escaping as she pushes herself upwards, gasping for air as she clutched the sides of the tub. Her cross around her neck felt hot as the prongs of its little rubies stabbed in her.
As if her mother was sending her a message from heaven.
That no boy or man was worth such thoughts.
She looked up to the window, the moon shining through the fog from the heat. She grasps that little cross in her one hand before she hauls herself from the tub. Standing dripping wet and naked she vowed to never allow herself to go to such a place again.
She may not be clean of him right now, but maybe just maybe one day she will be.
If you managed to survive this 2k of angst, I hope you enjoyed it.
If not that is fine too. I didn't set out to write this...it just wrote itself.
Tina.