It’s ugly.
It’s over.
As soon as his body is motionless on top of mine, I push against his shoulders. He rolls off of me. I sit up and wipe my eyes with my hands, then stand up and pull on my underwear. His fingers wrap around my ankle. The same fingers that wrapped around the same ankle the first night I met him.
“Tate,” he says, his voice riddled with everything. Every single emotion wraps itself around each letter of my name as it comes out of his mouth.
I pull away from his grasp.
I walk to the door, still feeling him inside me. Still tasting his mouth on mine. Still feeling the stains of his tears against my cheek.
I open the door and walk out.
I close the door behind me, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I can’t even walk the three feet back to my apartment.
I collapse in the hallway.
I’m liquid.
Nothing but tears.
chapter thirty-four
MILES
Six years earlier
We went home. Not to our home.
Rachel wanted Lisa. Rachel needs her mother.
I kind of need my father.
Every night I hold her. Every night I tell her I’m sorry. Every night we just cry.
I don’t understand how it can be so perfect. How life and love and people can be so perfect and beautiful.
Then it’s not. It’s so ugly.
Life and love and people become ugly.
It all becomes water.
Tonight is different. This night is the first night in three weeks when she’s not crying. I hold her anyway. I want to be happy that she’s not crying, but it scares me. Her tears mean she feels something. Even if that something is devastation, it’s still something. There aren’t any tears tonight.
I hold her anyway. I tell her I’m sorry again.
She never tells me it’s okay.
She never tells me it’s not my fault.
She never tells me she forgives me.
She does kiss me tonight, though. She kisses me and takes off her shirt. She tells me to make love to her. I tell her we shouldn’t. I tell her we’re supposed to wait two more weeks. She kisses me so I’ll stop talking.
I kiss her back.
Rachel loves me again.
I think.
She’s kissing me like she loves me.
I’m gentle with her.
I go slow.
She’s touching my skin like she loves me.
I don’t want to hurt her.
She cries.
Please don’t cry, Rachel.
I stop.
She tells me not to stop.
She tells me to finish.
Finish.
I don’t like that word.
Like this is a job.
I kiss her again.
I finish.
• • •
Miles,
Rachel wrote me a letter.
I’m sorry.
No.
I can’t do this. It hurts too much.
No, no, no.
My mother is taking me back to Phoenix. We’re both staying there. It’s all too complicated, even between the two of them now. Your father already knows.
Clayton brings families together.
Miles rips them apart.
I tried to stay. I tried to love you. Every time I look at you, I see him. Everything is him. If I stay, everything will always be him. You know that. I know you understand that. I shouldn’t blame you.
But you do.
I’m so sorry.
You stopped loving me with a letter, Rachel?
Love,
I feel it. All the ugly parts of it. It’s in my pores. My veins. My memories. My future.
Rachel.
The difference between the ugly side of love and the beautiful side of love is that the beautiful side is much lighter. It makes you feel like you’re floating. It lifts you up. Carries you.
The beautiful parts of love hold you above the rest of the world. They hold you so high above all the bad stuff, and you just look down on everything else and think, Wow. I’m so glad I’m up here.
Sometimes the beautiful parts of love move back to Phoenix.
The ugly parts of love are too heavy to move back to Phoenix. The ugly parts of love can’t lift you up.
They bring you
D
O
W
N.
They hold you under.
Drown you.
You look up and think, I wish I was up there.
But you’re not.
Ugly love becomes you.
Consumes you.
Makes you hate it all.
Makes you realize that all the beautiful parts aren’t even worth it. Without the beautiful, you’ll never risk feeling this.
You’ll never risk feeling the ugly.
So you give it up. You give it all up. You never want love again, no matter what kind it is, because no type of love will ever be worth living through the ugly love again.
I’ll never let myself love anyone again, Rachel.
Ever.
chapter thirty-five
TATE
“Last load,” Corbin says, picking up the remaining two boxes.
I hand Corbin the key to my new place. “I’ll make one more walk-through and meet you over there.” I open the door for Corbin, and he exits the apartment. I’m left staring at the door across the hall.
I haven’t seen or spoken to him since last week. I’ve been selfishly hoping he would show up and apologize, but then again, what would he even be apologizing for? He never lied to me. He never verbalized promises that he broke.
The only times he wasn’t brutally honest with me were the times he didn’t speak. The times he looked at me and I assumed the feelings I saw in his eyes were more than what he was able to verbalize.
It’s apparent now that I more than likely invented those feelings from him in order to match them to my own. The occasional emotion behind his eyes when we were together was obviously a figment of my own imagination. A figment of my hope.
I scan the apartment one last time to make sure I packed everything. When I step outside and lock Corbin’s door behind me, my movements are taken over by something I’m unfamiliar with.
I can’t tell if it’s braveness or desperation, but my hand is balled into a fist, and that fist is knocking on his door.
I tell myself that I’m free to escape to the elevator if ten seconds pass and the door doesn’t open.
Unfortunately, it opens after seven.
My thoughts begin to riot with rationalization as the door opens wider. Before rationalization wins and I dart away, Ian appears in the doorway. His eyes change from complacent to sympathetic when he sees me standing here.
“Tate,” he says, capping my name off with a smile. I notice the shift of his gaze toward Miles’s bedroom before his eyes fall back on mine. “Let me get him,” he says.
I feel the ascent in the nod of my head, but my heart is making a descent, scaling down my chest, through my stomach, and straight to the floor.
“Tate’s at the door,” I hear Ian say. I inspect every word, every syllable, searching for a clue wherever I can find one. I want to know if he rolled his eyes when he said that or if he said it hopefully. If anyone knows how Miles would feel about me standing in his doorway, it would be Ian. Unfortunately, Ian’s voice gives no indication of what Miles may feel about my presence.