Ugly Love(50)

He’s still inside me, but he’s finished. He’s just not moving. One of his hands is still covering my mouth, the other still squeezing my fingers. His face is still buried against my neck.
But he’s so incredibly still I’m afraid to move. I don’t even feel him breathing.
The first thing to move is his hand, away from my mouth. He unlocks his fingers from mine and straightens them, pulling them slowly apart from mine. He presses both palms against the table and lifts his face away from my neck. He pulls out of me without a sound.
It’s still too quiet, so I don’t move.
I hear him as he pulls his pants back into position and zips them.
I hear his footsteps as he walks away.
He’s walking away.
His bedroom door slams shut, and I flinch. My cheek and palms and stomach are still flat against his table, but now so are my tears.
They’re falling.
Falling, falling, falling, and I can’t stop them.
I’m embarrassed. I’m ashamed. I don’t have a clue what the hell is wrong with him, but I have too much pride and too little courage to go find out.
This felt like an end. I’m not sure I was ready for this to be the end. I’m not sure I was ready for there ever to be an end, and I hate myself for allowing my feelings to get to that point.
I’m also angry because here I am, standing in his apartment, looking for my pants, trying to stop my ridiculous tears, still feeling the remnants of him sliding down my leg, and I have no f*cking clue why he had to ruin it.
Ruin me.
I finish getting dressed, and I leave.




Chapter twenty

MILES

Six years earlier
“You’re getting an outie,” I tell her. I run my fingers over her
bare stomach, and I kiss it. “It’s cute.”
I press my ear to her skin and close my eyes. “I bet he’s lonely
in there,” I say. “Are you lonely in there, buddy?”
Rachel laughs. “You keep calling him a boy. What if he’s a girl?”
I tell Rachel whatever he is, I’ll love him the same. I already
love him.
Or her.
Our parents are out of town. We’re playing house again, except
this time, we aren’t really playing. It’s kind of serious.
“So what happens if he really does propose to her this time?”
she asks.
I tell her not to worry. I tell her he’s not proposing. He would
ask me first before he did it. I know that much about him.
“We have to tell them,” I say to her.
She nods. She knows we have to tell them. It’s been three
months. We graduate in two. She’s starting to show.
She’s getting an outie. It’s cute.
“We should tell them tomorrow,” I say.
She says okay.
I move away from her stomach and lie beside her. I pull her
against me. I touch her face.
“I love you, Rachel,” I tell her.
She’s not as scared now. She tells me she loves me, too.
“You’re doing a good job,” I say. She doesn’t know what I’m
talking about, so I grin and touch her stomach. “You’re doing a
good job growing him. I’m pretty sure you’re gonna grow the
best baby any woman has ever grown.”
She laughs at my silliness.
You love me so much, Rachel.
I look at her—at the girl I gave my heart to—and I wonder
how I got so lucky.
I wonder why she loves me just as much as I love her.
I wonder what my dad is going to say when he finds out about
us.
I wonder if Lisa will hate me. I wonder if she’ll want to take
Rachel back to Phoenix.
I wonder how I can convince them that we’ve got this.
“What are we going to name him?” I ask her.
She’s excited when I ask her this. She likes talking about names.
She says if it’s a girl, she wants to name her Claire. After her
grandmother.
I tell her I wish I knew her grandmother. I want to know the
woman my daughter will be named after. She tells me her
grandmother would have loved me. I tell her I love the name
Claire.
“What if he’s a boy?” I ask.
“You can pick the boy name,” she says.
I tell her that’s a lot of pressure. I tell her he’ll have to live with
his name the rest of his life. She says, “Then you’d better pick
a good one.”
I’d better pick a good one.
“One that means something to you,” she says.
One that means something to me.
I tell her I have the perfect name for him.
She wants to know what it is. I tell her I’m not telling her. I’ll
tell her his name after it becomes his name.
After he’s born.
She tells me I’m insane. She says she refuses to give birth to
our baby until she knows his name.
I laugh. I tell her she has no choice.
She tells me I’m crazy.
You love that about me, Rachel.




Chapter twenty-one

TATE

I worked all weekend, so I haven’t seen or spoken to Miles since Thursday night. I keep telling myself it’s for the best, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it with the way I’ve been letting it eat at me. Tonight is Monday, and it’s the first of three days when Corbin won’t be home and Miles will be. I know he knows Corbin is gone, but based on the way he left things Thursday, I doubt he cares much. I half expected that he would eventually explain if I did something wrong or at least tell me what upset him so much, but the last I got from him was the slam of his bedroom door after he walked away.