Ugly Love(5)

“Let’s go to the couch, buddy.”
He drops his forehead to the side of my head and stumbles along with me, making it even harder to hold him up. “My name isn’t Buddy,” he slurs. “It’s Miles.”
We make it to the front of the couch, and I start to peel him off me. “Okay, Miles. Whoever you are. Just go to sleep.”
He falls onto the couch, but he doesn’t let go of my shoulders. I fall with him and immediately attempt to pull away.
“Rachel, don’t,” he begs, grabbing me by the arm, trying to pull me to the couch with him.
“My name isn’t Rachel,” I say, freeing myself from his iron grip. “It’s Tate.” I don’t know why I clarify what my name is, because it’s not likely he’ll remember this conversation tomorrow. I walk to where the throw pillow is and pick it up off the floor.
I pause before handing it back to him, because he’s on his side now, and his face is pressed into the couch cushion. He’s gripping the couch so tightly his knuckles are white. At first, I think he’s about to get sick, but then I realize how incredibly wrong I am.
He’s not sick.
He’s crying.
Hard.
So hard he isn’t even making a sound.
I don’t even know the guy, but the obvious devastation he’s experiencing is difficult to witness. I look down the hallway and back to him, wondering if I should leave him alone in order to give him privacy. The last thing I want to do is get tangled up in someone’s issues. I’ve successfully avoided most forms of drama in my circle of friends up to this point, and I sure as hell don’t want to start now. My first instinct is to walk away, but for some reason, I find myself oddly sympathetic toward him. His pain actually appears genuine and not just the result of an overconsumption of alcohol.
I lower myself to my knees in front of him and touch his shoulder. “Miles?”
He inhales a huge breath, slowly lifting his face to look at me. His eyes are mere slits and bloodshot red. I’m not sure if that’s a result of the crying or the alcohol. “I’m so sorry, Rachel,” he says, lifting a hand out toward me. He wraps it around the back of my neck and pulls me forward toward him, burying his face in the crevice between my neck and shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
I have no idea who Rachel is or what he did to her, but if he’s hurting this bad, I shudder to think what she’sfeeling. I’m tempted to find his phone and search for her name and call her so she can come rectify this. Instead, I gently push him back into the couch. I lay his pillow down and urge him onto it. “Go to sleep, Miles,” I say gently.
His eyes are so full of hurt when he drops to the pillow. “You hate me so much,” he says as he grabs my hand. His eyes fall shut again, and he releases a heavy sigh.
I stare at him silently, allowing him to keep hold of my hand until he’s quiet and still and there aren’t any more tears. I pull my hand away from his, but I stay by his side for a few minutes longer.
Even though he’s asleep, he somehow still looks as if he’s in a world of pain. His eyebrows are furrowed, and his breathing is sporadic, failing to fall into a peaceful pattern.
For the first time, I notice a faint, jagged scar, about four inches long, that runs smoothly across the entire right side of his jaw. It stops just two inches shy of his lips. I have the strange urge to touch it and run my finger down the length of it, but instead, my hand reaches up to his hair. It’s short on the sides, a little longer on the top, and just the perfect blend of brown and blond. I stroke his hair, comforting him, even though he may not deserve it.
This guy may deserve every single bit of the remorse he’s feeling for whatever he did to Rachel, but at least he’s feeling it. I have to give him that much.
Whatever he did to Rachel, at least he loves her enough to regret it.



Chapter two

MILES

Six years earlier
I open the door to the administration office and walk the roll sheet to the secretary’s desk. Before I turn and head back to class, she stops me with a question. “You’re in Mr. Clayton’s senior English class, aren’t you, Miles?”
“Yep,” I reply to Mrs. Borden. “Need me to take something to him?”
The phone on her desk rings, and she nods, picking up the receiver. She covers it with her hand. “Wait around another minute or two,” she says, nodding her head in the direction of the principal’s office. “We’ve got a new student who just enrolled, and she also has Mr. Clayton this period. I need you to show her to the classroom.”
I agree and plop down into one of the chairs next to the door. I look around the administration office and realize this is the first time in the four years I’ve been in high school that I’ve ever sat in one of these seats. Which means I’ve successfully made it four years without being sent to the office.
My mother would have been proud to know that, although it leaves me kind of disappointed in myself. Detention is something every male in high school should accomplish at least once. I have the rest of my senior year to achieve it, though, so there’s that to look forward to.
I retrieve my phone from my pocket, secretly hoping Mrs. Borden sees me with it and decides to slap me with a detention slip. When I look up at her, she’s still on the phone, but she makes eye contact with me. She simply smiles and goes about her secretarial duties.
I shake my head in disappointment and open up a text to Ian. It doesn’t take much to excite people around here. Nothing new ever happens.