Ugly Love(25)

I walk back to Rachel’s room. I close the door.
It’s just the two of us.
We smile.
I walk to her and wrap my arms around her, then I kiss her
neck. It’s been three weeks since the first night I kissed her.
I can count the times I’ve kissed her since then. We can’t
interact like this at school. We can’t interact like this in public.
We can’t interact like this in front of our parents. I can only
touch her when we’re alone, and we haven’t been able to be
alone much in the last three weeks.
Now?
Now I kiss her.
“We need a few guidelines so we don’t get ourselves in
trouble,” she says. She separates herself from me. She sits at my
desk, and I sit on my bed.
Well . . . she sits at her desk, and I sit on her bed.
“First,” she says, “no making out when they’re home. It’s too
risky.”
I don’t want to agree to that rule, but I’m nodding my head.
“Second, no sex.”
I’m not nodding anymore.
“Ever?” I ask her.
She’s nodding. Oh, I really hate that nod.
“Why?”
She sighs heavily. “Sex will make it that much harder when our
time is up. You know that.”
She’s right. She’s also completely wrong, but I have a feeling
she’ll figure that out later.
“Can I ask what rule number three is before I agree to rule
number two?”
She grins. “There is no rule number three.”
I grin. “So sex is the only thing off limits? And we’re talking
penetration, right? Not oral?”
She covers her face with her hands. “Oh, my God, do you have
to get so specific?”
She’s cute when she’s embarrassed. “Just clarifying. I have a
lifetime of things I want to do to you and only six months left
to do them all.”
“Let’s leave the specifics up to the situation,” she says.
“Fair enough,” I say, admiring the blush in her cheeks.
“Rachel? Are you a virgin?”
Her cheeks grow even redder. She shakes her head and tells
me no. She asks if that bothers me.
“Not at all,” I say, being honest.
She asks if I’m a virgin, but her voice is timid when she asks it.
“No,” I say. “But now that I’ve met you, I kind of wish I was.”
She likes that I said this to her.
I stand up and prepare to head to my new bedroom to begin
rearranging. Before I walk out, I lock her bedroom door from
the inside, and then I turn around and smile at her.
I slowly walk to her.
I take her by the hands and pull her up. I wrap my arm around
her lower back and pull her against me.
I kiss her.



Chapter eleven

TATE

“I have to pee.”
Corbin groans. “Again?”
“I haven’t been in two hours,” I say defensively.
I really don’t have to use the bathroom, but I do need to get out of this car. After the conversation I had with Miles last night, the car feels different with him in it. It feels like there’s more of him, and every minute that passes and he’s not talking, I’m wondering what’s going through his head. I’m wondering if he regrets our conversation. I’m wondering if he’s going to pretend it never happened.
I wish my dad would have pretended it never happened. Before we left this morning, I was seated at the kitchen table with him when Miles walked in.
“Sleep well, Miles?” he asked as Miles took a seat at the table.
I thought he was going to flush with embarrassment, but instead, he regarded my dad with a shake of his head. “Not too well,” Miles replied. “Your son talks in his sleep.”
My father picked up his glass and lifted it in Miles’s direction. “Good to know you were in the room with Corbin last night.”
Luckily, Corbin had yet to sit down and hear that comment from my father. Miles was quiet through the rest of breakfast, and the only time I noticed him speaking after that was when Corbin and I were both in the car. Miles stepped over to my father and shook his hand, saying something that only my father could hear. I tried to read my father’s expression, but he kept a tight lid on it. My father is almost as good at hiding his thoughts as Miles is.
I really want to know what Miles said to my father this morning before we left.
I also want to know about a dozen other answers to questions I have about Miles.
When we were younger, Corbin and I always agreed that if we could have any superpower, it would be the ability to fly. Now that I know Miles, I’ve changed my mind. If I had a superpower, it would be infiltration. I would infiltrate his mind so I could see every single one of his thoughts.
I would infiltrate his heart and spread myself around like a virus.
I would call myself the Infiltrator.
Yeah. That has a nice ring to it.
“Go pee,” Corbin says with agitation as he puts the car in park.
I wish I were in high school again so I could call him a butthole. Adults don’t call their brothers buttholes, though.
I get out of the car and feel a little more like I can breathe again, until Miles opens his door and steps out of the car and into the world. Now Miles seems even bigger, and my lungs seem smaller. We walk together into the gas station, but we don’t speak.
It’s funny how that works. Sometimes not speaking says more than all the words in the world. Sometimes my silence is saying, I don’t know how to speak to you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. Talk to me. Tell me everything you’ve ever said. All the words. Starting from your very first one.