Ugly Love: A Novel(28)

He reaches down to my hand and touches it so softly it’s as if he’s aware he’s made of lava and I’m not. He grips two of my fingers, not even coming close to holding my entire hand, and gives them a soft tug.

“Wait,” I say to him, tugging back on his hand. He glances at me over his shoulder and then turns to face me completely. “What did you say to my father this morning? Before we left?”

His fingers tighten around mine, and his expression doesn’t deviate from the poignant look he’s perfected. “I apologized to him.”

He turns toward the door once again, and I follow him this time. He doesn’t release my hand until we’re close to the exit. When he finally does let my hand fall, I evaporate again.

I follow him toward the car and hope I don’t really believe I’m capable of infiltration. I remind myself he’s made of armor. He’s impenetrable.

I don’t know if I can do this, Miles. I don’t know if I can follow rule number two, because I suddenly want to climb into your future more than I want to climb into the backseat with you.

“Long line,” Miles says to Corbin once we’re both inside the car. Corbin puts the car in drive and changes the radio station. He doesn’t care how long the line was. He wasn’t suspicious, or he would have said something. Besides, there’s nothing to be suspicious of yet.

We drive for a good fifteen minutes before I realize I’m not thinking about Miles anymore. For the last fifteen minutes of the drive, my thoughts have just been memories.

“Remember when we were kids and we wished our superpower could be to fly?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Corbin says.

“You have your superpower now. You can fly.”

Corbin smiles at me in the rearview mirror. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess that makes me a superhero.”

I lean back in the seat and stare out the window, a little envious of both of them. Envious of the things they’ve seen. The places they’ve traveled. “What’s it like, watching the sunrise from up in the air?”

Corbin shrugs. “I don’t really look at it,” he says. “I’m too busy working when I’m up there.”

This makes me sad. Don’t take it for granted, Corbin.

“I look,” Miles says. He’s staring out his window, and his voice is so quiet I almost don’t hear it. “Every time I’m up there, I watch it.”

He doesn’t say what it’s like, though. His voice is distant, like he wants to keep that feeling to himself. I let him.

“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.