Ugly Love: A Novel(35)

Just thinking about how much I enjoyed tonight is enough to make me accept and even embrace his casualness afterward. Maybe with a little more practice, I can even learn how to enforce it myself.

I walk to my apartment door but pause when I hear someone speaking. I press my ear to the door and listen. Corbin is having a one-sided conversation in the living room, presumably with someone on the other end of his cell phone.

I can’t walk in now. He thinks I’m in bed.

I look back at Miles’s apartment door, but I’m not about to knock on it. Not only would that be awkward, but it would also mean he’d get even less sleep than he’s already about to get.

I walk to the elevator and decide to sit out the next half hour in the lobby, hoping Corbin will go back to his bedroom soon.

It’s ridiculous that I even feel I have to hide this from Corbin, but the last thing I want is for him to be upset with Miles. And that’s exactly what would happen.

I make it to the lobby and step off the elevator, not quite sure what I’m even doing. I guess I could go wait it out in my car.

“You lost?”

I glance over to Cap, and he’s seated in his usual spot, despite the fact that it’s almost midnight. He pats the empty chair next to him. “Have a seat.”

I walk past him to the empty chair. “I didn’t bring any food this time,” I say. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t like you for your food, Tate. You’re not that good of a cook.”

I laugh, and it feels good to laugh. Things have just felt so intense for the past two days.

“How was Thanksgiving?” he asks. “Did the boy have a good time?”

I look at him and tilt my head in confusion. “The boy?”

He nods. “Mr. Archer. Didn’t he spend the holiday with you and your brother?”

I nod, understanding his question now. “Yes,” I say. I want to add that I’m pretty sure Mr. Archer just had the best Thanksgiving he’s had in more than six years, but I don’t. “Mr. Archer had a great time, I think.”

“And what’s the smile for?”

I immediately wipe away the grin I didn’t realize was plastered on my face. I scrunch up my nose. “What smile?”

Cap laughs. “Oh, hell,” he says. “You and the boy? Are you fallin’ in love, Tate?”

I shake my head. “No,” I say immediately. “It’s not like that.”

“How so, then?”

I quickly look away as soon as I feel the blush creep up my neck. Cap laughs when he sees my cheeks turn as red as the chairs we’re seated on.

“I may be old, but that don’t mean I can’t read body language,” he says. “Does this mean you and the boy are . . . what’s the term they use now? Hookin’ up? Bumpin’ uglies?”

I lean forward and bury my face in my hands. I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with an eighty-year-old man.

I quickly shake my head. “I’m not answering that.”

“I see,” Cap says with a nod. We’re both quiet for a moment while we process what I more or less just told him. “Well, good,” he says. “Maybe that boy will actually smile every now and then.”

I nod in complete agreement. I could definitely use more of his smile. “Can we change the subject now?”

Cap slowly turns his head toward me and arches his bushy gray eyebrow. “I ever tell you about the time I found a dead body on the third floor?”

I shake my head, relieved that he changed the subject but confused that the subject of a dead body has somehow helped me find relief.

I’m just as morbid as Cap.





chapter fourteen


MILES


Six years earlier

“Do you think the fact that we shouldn’t be doing this is why we like doing it so much?” Rachel asks.

She’s referring to kissing me.

We kiss a lot.

Every chance we get and even chances we don’t get.

“When you say shouldn’t, do you mean because our parents are together?”

She says yes. Her voice is breathless, because I’m currently kissing my way up her neck.

I like that I take her breath away.

“Remember the first time I saw you, Rachel?”

She moans a sound that means yes.

“And do you remember me walking you to Mr. Clayton’s class?”

She gives me another wordless yes.

“I wanted to kiss you that day.” I work my way back up to her mouth and look her in the eyes. “Did you want to kiss me?”

She says yes, and I can see in her eyes that she’s thinking back to that day.

To the day she

Became

My

Everything.

“We didn’t know about our parents that day,” I explain. “Yet we still wanted to be doing this. So no, I don’t think that’s why we like it now.”

She smiles.

“See?” I whisper, brushing my lips softly across hers to show her how good it feels.

She lifts off her pillow and holds herself up on her elbow.

“What if we just like kissing in general?” she asks. “What if it has nothing to do with me or you in particular?”