Ugly Love: A Novel(31)

“You thirsty?” He walks toward his kitchen, but I’m not sure if I can follow him this time. I don’t know how to do this, and I’m scared he’ll notice that I’ve never had a rule number one or two before. If the past and the future are off limits, that only leaves the present, and I have no idea what to do in the present.

I walk to the kitchen in the present. “What do you have?” I ask him.

The bag is on the counter now, and he sees me eyeing it, so he pushes it aside, out of my view.

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll see if I have it,” he says.

“Orange juice.”

He grins, then reaches toward the bag. He pulls out a container of orange juice, and the simple fact that he even thought about it is testament to his generosity. It’s also testament that it doesn’t take much to make me melt. I should tell him my one rule has just become Stop doing things that make me want to break your rules.

I take the orange juice from him with a smile. “What else is in the bag?”

He shrugs. “Stuff.”

He watches me open the juice. He watches me take a drink of the juice. He watches me put the lid back on the juice. He watches me set the juice on his kitchen counter, but he doesn’t watch me closely enough to notice how fast I can lunge for the bag.

I grab it right before his arms wrap around my waist.

He’s laughing. “Put it back, Tate.”

I open it and look inside.

Condoms.

I laugh and toss it back onto the counter. When I turn around, his arms don’t leave me. “I really want to say something inappropriate or embarrassing, but I can’t think of anything. Just pretend I did and laugh anyway.”

He doesn’t laugh, but his arms are still around me. “You’re so weird,” he says.

“I don’t care.”

He smiles. “This whole thing is weird.”

He’s telling me how weird this is, but it feels pretty damn good to me. I’m not sure if weird feels good or bad to him. “Is weird good or bad?”

“Both,” he says. “Neither.”

“You’re weird,” I tell him.

He grins. “I don’t care.”

He moves his hands up my back, to my shoulders, and slowly down my arms until his hands are touching mine.

That reminds me.

I pull his hand between us. “How’s your hand?”

“Fine,” he says.

“I should probably check it out tomorrow,” I say.

“I won’t be here tomorrow. I leave in a few hours.”

Two thoughts cross my mind. One, I’m very disappointed he’s leaving tonight. Two, Why am I here if he’s leaving tonight?

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t sleep now.”

“You didn’t even try,” I say. “You can’t fly a plane on no sleep, Miles.”

“The first flight is short. Besides, I’m copilot. I’ll sleep on the plane.”

Sleep isn’t on his agenda. Tate is.

Tate overrules sleep on his agenda.

I wonder what else Tate overrules?

“So,” I whisper as I drop his hand. I pause, because I don’t have anything to follow the So. Nothing. Not even a la-ti-do.

It’s quiet.

It’s getting awkward.

“So,” he says. His fingers move through mine and spread them apart. My fingers like his fingers.

“Do you want to know how long it’s been for me, since I know such an intimate detail about you?” I ask him.

It’s only fair, considering my entire family knows how long it’s been for him.

“No,” he says simply. “But I do want to kiss you.”

Hmm. Not sure how to take that, but I’m not about to analyze his no when it’s followed up with a statement like that.

“Then kiss me,” I say.

His fingers leave mine and move to the sides of my head, and he holds me still. “I hope you taste like orange juice again.”

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

I count the words in that last sentence, then search around in my head for a place to store those eight words forever. I want to hide them in a mind drawer and label it Things to pull out and read when his stupid rule number two becomes a sad and lonely present.

Miles is in my mouth. He’s invading me again. I shut the mind drawer and get out of my head and come back to him.

Invade me, invade me, invade me.

I must taste like orange juice, because he’s certainly acting as though he’s enjoying the taste. I must enjoy tasting him, too, because I’m pulling him to me, kissing him, doing my best to infiltrate him with nothing but Tate.

He pulls away to catch his breath and speak. “I forgot how good this feels.”

He’s comparing me. I don’t like that he’s comparing me to whoever else once made him feel this good.

“Want to know something?” he says.

I do. I want to know everything, but for some reason, I pick this moment to get revenge on that one word he spoke to me.

“No.” I pull him back to my mouth. He doesn’t kiss me back right away, because he doesn’t know what to think about what just happened. His mouth catches up pretty quickly, though. I think he hated my clipped response as much as I hated his, and now he’s using his hands to get his own revenge. I can’t tell where he’s touching me, because as soon as he touches me in one spot, his hands move to another. He’s touching me everywhere, nowhere, not at all, all at once.