Ugly Love: A Novel(19)

She gets us each a glass of water. We lean against opposite counters.

We stare at each other.

I shouldn’t have kissed her last night.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you, Rachel.”

“I shouldn’t have let you,” she tells me.

We stare at each other some more. I’m wondering if she would let me kiss her again. I’m wondering if I should leave.

“It’ll be easy to stop this,” I say.

I’m lying.

“No, it won’t,” she says.

She’s telling the truth.

“You think they’ll get married?”

She nods. For some reason, I don’t love this nod as much. I don’t love the question it’s answering.

“Miles?”

She looks down at her feet. She says my name like it’s a gun and she’s firing a warning shot and I’m supposed to run.

I sprint. “What?”

“We only rented the apartment for a month. I overheard her on the phone with him yesterday.” She looks back up at me. “We’re moving in with you in two weeks.”

I trip over the hurdle.

She’s moving in with me.

She’ll be living in my house.

Her mother is going to fill all my mother’s empty spaces.

I close my eyes. I still see Rachel.

I open my eyes. I stare at Rachel.

I turn around and grip the counter. I let my head fall between my shoulders. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to like her.

I don’t want to fall in love with you, Rachel.

I’m not stupid. I know how lust works.

Lust wants what lust can’t have.

Lust wants me to have Rachel.

Reasoning wants Rachel to go away.

I take Reasoning’s side, and I turn to face Rachel again. “This won’t go anywhere,” I tell her. “This thing with us. It won’t end well.”

“I know,” she whispers.

“How do we stop it?” I ask her.

She looks at me, hoping I’ll answer my own question.

I can’t.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

LOUD, DEAFENING SILENCE.

I want to cover my ears with my hands.

I want to cover my heart with armor.

I don’t even know you, Rachel.

“I should leave,” I say.

She tells me okay.

“I can’t,” I whisper.

She tells me okay.

We stare at each other.

Maybe if I stare at her enough, I’ll get tired of staring at her.

I want to taste her again.

Maybe if I taste her enough, I’ll get tired of tasting her.

She doesn’t wait for me to reach her. She meets me halfway. I grab her face and she grabs my arms, and our guilt collides when our mouths collide. We lie to ourselves about the truth.

We tell ourselves we’ve got this . . . when we don’t have it at all.

My skin feels better with her touching it. My hair feels better with her hands in it. My mouth feels better with her tongue inside of it.

I wish we could breathe like this.

Live like this.

Life would feel better with her like this.

Her back is against the refrigerator now. My hands are beside her head. I pull away and look at her.

“I want to ask you a million questions,” I say to her.

She smiles. “I guess you’d better get started.”

“Where are you going to college?”

“Michigan,” she says. “What about you?”

“Staying here to get my bachelor’s, and then my best friend, Ian, and I are going to flight school. I want to be a pilot. What do you want to be?”

“Happy,” she says with a smile.

That’s the perfect answer.

“When’s your birthday?” I ask her.

“January third,” she says. “I’ll be eighteen. When’s yours?”

“Tomorrow,” I tell her. “I’ll be eighteen.”

She doesn’t believe that my birthday is tomorrow. I show her my ID. She tells me happy early birthday. She kisses me again.

“What happens if they get married?” I ask her.

“They’ll never approve of us being together, even if they don’t get married.”

She’s right. It would be hard to explain to their friends. Hard to explain to the rest of the family.

“So what’s the point of continuing this if we know it won’t end well?” I ask her.

“Because we don’t know how to stop.”

She’s right.

“You’re going to Michigan in seven months, and I’ll be here in San Francisco. Maybe that’s our answer.”

She nods. “Seven months?”

I nod. I touch her lips with my finger, because her lips are the kind of lips that need appreciating, even when they aren’t being kissed. “We do this for seven months. We don’t tell anyone. Then . . .” I stop talking, because I don’t know how to say the words We stop.

“Then we stop,” she whispers.

“Then we stop,” I agree.

She nods, and I can actually hear our countdown begin.

I kiss her, and it feels even better now that we have a plan.