Ugly Love

“Sleep well, Miles?” he asked as Miles took a seat at the table.

I thought he was going to flush with embarrassment, but instead, he regarded my dad with a shake of his head. “Not too well,” Miles replied. “Your son talks in his sleep.”

My father picked up his glass and lifted it in Miles’s direction. “Good to know you were in the room with Corbin last night.”

Luckily, Corbin had yet to sit down and hear that comment from my father. Miles was quiet through the rest of breakfast, and the only time I noticed him speaking after that was when Corbin and I were both in the car. Miles stepped over to my father and shook his hand, 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.

When we reach the bathrooms, he walks into the men’s restroom without pause. He doesn’t turn and look at me. He doesn’t wait for me to walk into the women’s first. I push the door open, but I don’t need to use the restroom. I just wanted to breathe, but he’s not letting me. He’s invading. I don’t think he means to. He’s just invading my thoughts and my stomach and my lungs and my world.

That’s his superpower. Invasion.

The Invader and the Infiltrator. They pretty much have the same meaning, so I guess we make one screwed-up team.

I wash my hands and waste enough time to make it seem like I actually needed Corbin to stop here. I open the door to the bathroom, and he’s invading again. He’s in my way, standing in front of the doorway that I’m trying to exit.

He doesn’t move, even though he’s invading. I don’t really want him to, though, so I let him stay.

“You want something to drink?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I have water in the car.”

“Hungry?”

I tell him I’m not. He seems slightly disappointed that I don’t want anything. Maybe he doesn’t want to go back to the car yet.

“I might want some candy, though,” I say.

One of his rare and treasured smiles slowly appears. “I’ll buy you some candy, then.”

He turns and walks toward the candy aisle. I stop next to him and look at my options. We stare at the candy for way too long. I don’t even really want any, but we both stare at it anyway and pretend we do.

“This is weird,” I whisper.

“What’s weird?” he asks. “Picking out candy or having to pretend we don’t both want to be in the backseat right now?”

Wow. I feel like I really did infiltrate his thoughts somehow. Only they were words that he willingly spoke. Words that made me feel really good.

“Both,” I say steadily. I turn to face him. “Do you smoke?”

He gives me the look again. The look that tells me I’m weird.

I don’t care.

“Nope,” he replies casually.

“Remember those candy cigarettes they sold when we were kids?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Kind of morbid, if you think about it.”

I nod. “Corbin and I used to get those all the time. There’s no way in hell I’d let my child buy those things.”

“I doubt they make them anymore,” Miles says.

We face the candy again.

“Do you?” he asks.

“Do I what?”

“Smoke.”

I shake my head. “Nope.”

“Good,” he says. We stare at the candy a little bit longer. He turns to face me, and I glance up at him. “Do you even want any candy, Tate?”

“Nope.”

He laughs. “Then I guess we should get back to the car.”

I agree with him, but neither of us moves.

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.

We tell our parents goodbye. Lisa tells Rachel to behave, but

Lisa isn’t really worried. As far as Lisa knows, Rachel is good.

Rachel behaves. Rachel doesn’t break rules.

Except rule number three. Rachel is definitely breaking rule

number three this weekend.

We play house.

We pretend it’s ours. We pretend it’s our kitchen, and she cooks

for me. I pretend she’s mine, and I follow her around while

she cooks, holding on to her. Touching her. Kissing her neck.

Pulling her away from the tasks she’s trying to complete so I

can feel her against me. She likes it, but she pretends not to.

When we’re finished eating, she sits with me on the couch. We

put on a movie, but it doesn’t get watched at all. We can’t stop

kissing. We kiss so much our lips hurt. Our hands hurt. Our

stomachs hurt, because our bodies want to break rule number

two so, so bad.

It’s gonna be a long weekend.

I decide I need a shower, or I’ll be begging for an amendment

to rule number two.

I take a shower in her bathroom. I like this shower. I like it

more than I liked it back when it was just my shower. I like

seeing her things in here. I like looking at her razor and

imagining what she looks like when she uses it. I like looking

at her shampoo bottles and thinking about her with her head

tilted back beneath the stream of water as she rinses it out of

her hair.

I love that my shower is her shower, too.

“Miles?” she says. She’s knocking, but she’s already inside the

bathroom. The water is hot on my skin, but her voice just

made it even hotter. I open the shower curtain. Maybe I open

it too far because I want her to want to break rule number two.

She inhales a soft breath, but her eyes fall where I want

them to.