Ugly Love(27)

“You bend the laws of the universe when you fly,” I say. “It’s impressive. Defying gravity? Watching sunrises and sunsets from places Mother Nature didn’t intend for you to watch them from? You really are superheroes, if you think about it.”
Corbin glances at me in the rearview mirror and laughs. Don’t take it for granted, Corbin. Miles isn’t laughing, though. He’s still staring out his window.
“You save lives,” Miles says to me. “That’s way more impressive.”
My heart absorbs those words on impact.
Rule number two is not looking good from back here.



Chapter twelve

MILES

Six years earlier
Rule number one of no fooling around while our parents are
home has been amended.
It now consists of making out but only when we’re behind a
locked door.
Rule number two stands firm, unfortunately. Still no sex.
And a rule number three was recently added: no sneaking
around at night. Lisa still checks on Rachel in the middle of
the night sometimes, only because Lisa is the mother of a
teenage daughter and it’s the right thing to do.
But I hate that she does it.
We’ve made it an entire month in the same house. We don’t
talk about the fact that there are just a little more than five
months left. We don’t talk about what will happen when my
father marries her mother. We don’t talk about the fact that
when this happens, we’ll be connected for much longer than
five months.
Holidays.
Weekend visits.
Reunions.
We’ll both have to attend every function, but we’ll be
attending as family.
We don’t talk about that, because it makes us feel like what
we’re doing is wrong.
We also don’t talk about it because it’s hard. When I think
about the day she moves to Michigan and I stay in San
Francisco, I can’t see beyond that. I can’t see anything where
she won’t be my everything.
“We’ll be back Sunday,” he says.
“You’ll have the house to yourself. Rachel is staying with a
friend. You should invite Ian over.”
“I did,” I lie.
Rachel lied, too. Rachel will be here all weekend. We
don’t want to give them any reason to suspect us. It’s
hard enough trying to ignore her in front of them. It’s
hard pretending I have nothing in common with her,
when I want to laugh at everything she says. I want to
high-five everything she does. I want to brag to my father
about her intelligence, her good grades, her kindness,
her quick-wittedness. I want to tell him I have this really
amazing girlfriend whom I want him to meet because he
would absolutely love her.
He does love her. Just not in the way I wish he loved her.
I want him to love her for me.
We tell our parents good-bye. Lisa tells Rachel to behave, but
Lisa isn’t really worried. As far as Lisa knows, Rachel is good.
Rachel behaves. Rachel doesn’t break rules.
Except rule number three. Rachel is definitely breaking rule
number three this weekend.
We play house.
We pretend it’s ours. We pretend it’s our kitchen, and she cooks
for me. I pretend she’s mine, and I follow her around while
she cooks, holding on to her. Touching her. Kissing her neck.
Pulling her away from the tasks she’s trying to complete so I
can feel her against me. She likes it, but she pretends not to.
When we’re finished eating, she sits with me on the couch. We
put on a movie, but it doesn’t get watched at all. We can’t stop
kissing. We kiss so much our lips hurt. Our hands hurt. Our
stomachs hurt, because our bodies want to break rule number
two so, so bad.
It’s gonna be a long weekend.
I decide I need a shower, or I’ll be begging for an amendment
to rule number two.
I take a shower in her bathroom. I like this shower. I like it
more than I liked it back when it was just my shower. I like
seeing her things in here. I like looking at her razor and
imagining what she looks like when she uses it. I like looking
at her shampoo bottles and thinking about her with her head
tilted back beneath the stream of water as she rinses it out of
her hair.
I love that my shower is her shower, too.
“Miles?” she says. She’s knocking, but she’s already inside the
bathroom. The water is hot on my skin, but her voice just
made it even hotter. I open the shower curtain. Maybe I open
it too far because I want her to want to break rule number two.
She inhales a soft breath, but her eyes fall where I want
them to.
“Rachel,” I say, grinning at the embarrassed look on her face.
She looks me in the eyes.
She wants to take a shower with me. She’s just too shy to ask.
“Get in,” I say.
My voice is hoarse, like I’ve been screaming.
My voice was fine five seconds ago.
I close the shower curtain to hide what she’s doing to me but
also to give her privacy while she undresses. I haven’t seen her
without her clothes on. I’ve felt what’s underneath them.
I’m suddenly nervous.
She turns the light off.
“Is that fine?” she asks timidly. I say it is, but I wish she were
more confident. I need to make her more confident.
She opens the shower curtain, and I see one of her legs make
its way in first. I swallow when the rest of her body follows.
Luckily, there’s just enough light from the night-light to cast a