Ugly Love: A Novel

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.