Ugly Love

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andom guy: Tate, you want to have sex? e: Sure. Let me finish up with these two guys, and I’ll be right over. By the way, I don’t have any rules, so anything goes. andom guy: Awesome. He pulls out a spool of thread and hands it to me. “Do your best.” “It’s not like I’m sewing on a damn button, Miles.” “I’m not spending the whole day in an emergency room for a cut. Just do what you can. I’ll be fine.” I don’t want him to spend the day in an emergency room, either. That means he wouldn’t be here. “If your hand gets infected and you die, I’m denying any part in this.” “If my hand gets infected and I die, I’d be too dead to blame you.” “Good point,” I say. I clean his wound again, then take the supplies I’ll need and lay them out on the counter. I can’t get a good angle with how we’re positioned, so I stand up and prop my leg on the edge of the tub. I put his hand on my leg. I put his hand on my leg. Oh, hell. This isn’t gonna work with his arm draped across my leg like this. If I want my hands to remain calm and not shake, I’m going to need to reposition us. “This won’t work,” I say, turning to face him. I take his hand and rest it on the counter, then stand directly in front of him. The other way worked better, but I can’t have him touching my leg while I do this. “It’s gonna hurt,” I warn. He laughs as though he knows pain and to him, this isn’t pain. I pierce his skin with the needle, and he doesn’t even flinch. He doesn’t make a sound. He watches me work quietly. Every now and then, he looks up from my hand and watches my face. We don’t speak, like always. I try to ignore him. I try to focus on his hand and his wound and how it desperately needs to be closed, but our faces are so close, and I can feel his breath on my cheek every time he exhales. And he begins to exhale a lot. Since I got too old to do maintenance on this building. Worked here thirty-two years before I became captain. Been sending people on flights now for more than fifteen years, I think. Owner gave me a pity job to keep me busy till I died.” He smiles to himself. “What he didn’t realize is that God gave me a lot of great things to accomplish in my life, and right now, I’m so far behind I ain’t ever gonna die.”

I lift him by his shoulders and try to get him to sit up, but he doesn’t. I don’t think he can, actually. How does a person even get this drunk? Il libro viene alternato dal punto di vista di Tate nel presente e dal punto di vista di Miles nel passato. Tramite i pezzettini del passato di Miles riusciremo a capire pian piano quello che è successo a quel cuore tormentato, riusciremo a capire la sua lotta interiore. Lui non vuole amare, lui non vuole più provare quel sentimento per nessuno, ma ormai si sa che il cuore fa quel che gli pare e piace. E mentre Miles cerca di combattere e lottare contro i suoi sentimenti e il suo cuore, Tate riesce pian piano ad entrare dentro di lui. Six years earlier “Why is everything yellow?” My dad is standing in the doorway to Rachel’s bedroom, looking at the few items we’ve collected in the months since he’s known about the pregnancy. “It looks like Big Bird threw up in here.” Rachel laughs. She’s standing at the bathroom mirror, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. I’ve been lying on her bed, watching her. “We don’t want to know if it’s a boy or a girl, so we’re buying gender-neutral colors.” Rachel answers my dad’s question as if it were one of many, but we both know it’s the first. He hasn’t asked about the pregnancy. He doesn’t ask about our plans. He usually leaves the room if Rachel and I are both in it. Lisa isn’t much different. She’s not past the point of disappointment or sadness yet, so we don’t push it. It’ll take time, so Rachel and I are giving that to them. Right now, Rachel only has me to talk to about the baby,Miles: Are you busy? Me: Always busy. What’s up? Miles: I need your help. Won’t take long. Me: Be there in five.

I stare at my last text to him and cringe. It sounds way too casual. I’m giving him the impression that I do this all the time. He probably thinks all my days go something like this:Six years earlier My dad says he needs to speak to us. He asks me to get Rachel and meet him and Lisa at the diningroom table. I tell him okay, that there’s something we need to speak to them about, too. Curiosity flashes in his eyes but only for a brief second. He thinks about Lisa again, and he’s not curious anymore. His everything is Lisa. I go to Rachel’s room and tell my everything that they want to speak to us. We all sit down at the dining-room table. I know what he’s going to say. He’s going to tell us he proposed. I don’t want to care, but I do. I wonder why he didn’t tell me first. This makes me sad but only a little bit. It’s not going to matter after we tell them what we have to tell them. “I asked Lisa to marry me,” he says. Lisa smiles at him. He smiles at her. Rachel and I aren’t smiling. “So we did,” Lisa says, flashing her ring. I frown, not comfortable with the fact that the only two people I’ve interacted with since walking into this apartment building already know who I am. walks out the door. I fall into my chair. He’s so nice. I could get used to this. I pull my notebook in front of me and begin studying. About half an hour passes, and then I get a text from him. Miles: How’s the homework going?

All right, buddy,” I say, struggling to pull him away from the center of the doorway. “Sorry to interrupt your nap, but I need inside this apartment.”When I kissed all the other girls, I felt pleasure. That’s why people enjoy kissing, because it feels good. But when you like to kiss someone because of who she is, the difference isn’t found in the pleasure. The difference is found in the pain you feel when you’re not kissing her. It doesn’t hurt when I’m not kissing any of the other girls I’ve kissed. It only hurts when I’m not kissing Rachel. Maybe this explains why falling in love is so damn painful. I like kissing you, Rachel. I close the door to my car and walk to the stairs leading up to the second floor of my apartment complex. I’m relieved not to have to use the elevator anymore, but I can’t help but miss Cap a little bit, even if his advice didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me the majority of the time. It was nice just having him there to vent to. I’ve been keeping myself busy with work and school, trying to stay focused, but it’s been hard. I’ve been in my new apartment for two weeks now, and even though I wish I were alone, I never am. Every time I walk in through my front door, Miles is still everywhere. He’s still in everything, and I keep waiting until he’s not. I keep waiting for the day when it will hurt less. When I won’t miss him as much. I would say my heart is broken, but it’s not. I don’t think it is. Actually, I wouldn’t know, because my heart hasn’t been in my chest since I left it lying in front of his apartment the day I told him good-bye. I tell myself to take it one day at a time, but it’s so much easier said than done. Especially when those days turn into nights, and I have to lie in my bed alone, listening to the silence. The silence was never so loud until I told Miles goodbye. I’m already dreading opening my apartment door, and I’m not even halfway up the stairwell yet. I can already tell this night isn’t going to be any different from all the other nights since Miles. I reach the top of the stairs and

I’m hoping things will be different between us now, though. Corbin is twenty-five, and I’m twenty-three, so if we can’t get along better than we did as kids, we’ve got a lot of growing up left to do. Oh, no, you don’t. I reach beside me and cover all the buttons on the panel with my hands to hide the illuminated eighteenth-floor button, and then I press every single button between floors ten and eighteen. He glances at the panel, confused. I turn off my phone, because I want that to be the last text I receive for the night. I close my eyes. I’m falling, Rachel. saying something that only my father could hear. I tried to read my father’s expression, but he kept a tight lid on it. My father is almost as good at hiding his thoughts as Miles is. I really want to know what Miles said to my father this morning before we left. I also want to know about a dozen other answers to questions I have about Miles. When we were younger, Corbin and I always agreed that if we could have any superpower, it would be the ability to fly. Now that I know Miles, I’ve changed my mind. If I had a superpower, it would be infiltration. I would infiltrate his mind so I could see every single one of his thoughts. I would infiltrate his heart and spread myself around like a virus. I would call myself the Infiltrator. Yeah. That has a nice ring to it. “Go pee,” Corbin says with agitation as he puts the car in park. I wish I were in high school again so I could call him a butthole. Adults don’t call their brothers buttholes, though. I get out of the car and feel a little more like I can breathe again, until Miles opens his door and steps out of the car and into the world. Now Miles seems even bigger, and my lungs seem smaller. We walk together into the gas station, but we don’t speak. It’s funny how that works. Sometimes not speaking says more than all the words in the world. Sometimes my silence is saying, I don’t know how to speak to you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. Talk to me. Tell me everything you’ve ever said. All the words. Starting from your very first one. I wonder what his silence is saying. Once we’re inside, he spots the sign for the bathrooms first, so he nods his head and steps in front of me. He leads. I let him. Because he’s a solid and I’m a liquid, and right now, I’m just his wake.And boy, did he break it. As much as a fifteen-year-old heart can be broken after the span of a two-week secret relationship. Turned out he was officially dating quite a few girls during the two weeks he was with me. Once Corbin found out, their friendship was over, and all of Corbin’s friends were warned not to come near me. I found it almost impossible to date in high school until after Corbin finally moved away. Even then, though, the guys had heard horror stories and tended to steer clear of Corbin’s little sister. Miles defines complexity. A well-worn armor masks emotions, hides a past. We get to know him gradually, moment by moment. Upon first meeting him, he seems hardened, callous, uncaring, but we also get the sense that he’s been through something life-changing. Life-taking. Because now, in the present, he seems bereft of it. Living but not really living. Numb and simply going through the motions.