𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍𝐀𝐆𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐁𝐀𝐆 ✷ rodrick heffley (✓)

13. love is embarrassing

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chapter thirteen: love is embarrassing

[a/n]: live laugh love putting song titles/lyrics for the chapter title (especially when it's the loml olivia rodrigo)!! 

but truly, love is embarrassing when the love in question is rodrick heffley. get a grip, haley.
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━━━ WEDNESDAY ROLLS AROUND, AND DREADFULLY so, due to a series of unfortunate events. First, Haley hops out of bed, takes a shower, brushes her teeth, and after wrapping her hair in a rather unfashionable towel, gets started on her makeup. She begins with her regular pale pink blush, then applies a sheer red lip gloss.

She looks at herself in the mirror, unsatisfied with the unextraordinary state of her appearance. Upon careful decision, she plucks a brown eyeliner from a cup on her sink and draws a thin line on her waterline, then blends it out a bit with her index finger.

Haley dries her hair quickly and bounds downstairs to eat her breakfast. She frowns at the eerie silence of the house. Normally, the kitchen and family room would be bustling with noise and fuss over Alex's latest rebellious outfit.

Haley cranes her neck to look out the large window above the kitchen sink. Her stomach descends into a panic when she realizes that neither of her parents' cars are in the driveway.

That's weird, she thinks. They only leave early for work when it's a weekend.

Haley rushes upstairs to her room, frantically unzipping her backpack to heave her planner out of the hidden pocket in the back. She flips through it, running her finger over the pages to find the current date. When she does, she finds that it is labelled 'Faculty Development Day: No School!'

She groans, throwing her planner on the ground and stomping on it for good measure. One might describe her as dramatic, but the struggle of doing her makeup (and even deciding to make a statement!) and picking a relatively good outfit is real. Especially when has had so much pent up rage that can only be expelled with a good AP chemistry study session.

The ache of yesterday spreads across her head like the Black Plague as she remembers the fateful conversation she had with Rodrick. That dumb piece of shit. She never wants to have anything to do with him again. 

It isn't even a cocky thing to say that she's way out of his league. It's merely a fact. So how could she let some lowlife make her feel insecure and undesired? A couple of years ago, she would have only let Chad Michael Murray do that. If Rory Gilmore wouldn't take him, Haley sure would.

But the thing is, over the past weeks, she's learned that Rodrick is so much more than an unhygienic, obnoxious screwup. It hurts more to have your heart broken by someone who deserves it by someone who doesn't. Because you can't curse them out to the skies, burn their belongings in a dumpster fire, etcetera, etcetera. What's a girl to do when a good man hurts her?

Okay, maybe she's exaggerating a tad, but truly, the difference between Rodrick and Noah, is that underneath all of their similarities, Rodrick has character. There's substance, animation, life to him.

Apparently, there wasn't enough that night in order for him to show basic decency. But still, there were times when he'd shown a spark of humanity, when she'd seen something in him.