Ugly Love

by Colleen Hoover

I look him straight in the eyes to give him an answer, but his eyes catch me off guard for a short moment. They are the clearest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Not at all the heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes from last night. His eyes are so light blue they’re almost colorless. I continue to stare at them, half expecting to see waves if I look closely enough.

I look back up at him, and he’s doing that unfathomable staring thing again. With eyes like his, that should be illegal.

The only impressive thing about this apartment is the bookshelf in the living room. It’s lined with dozens of books, which is more of a turn-on to me than anything else that could potentially line his barren walls.

Oh my word, he has the V. Those beautiful indentations on men that run the length of their outer abdominal muscles, disappearing beneath their jeans as if the indentations are pointing to a secret bull’s-eye.

Lisa walks into the kitchen. She looks happy. She has a right to be happy. She’s not the one who died.

It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen Miles but only two seconds since the last time I’ve thought about him.

That’s how it is when a person develops an attraction toward someone. He’s nowhere, then suddenly he’s everywhere, whether you want him to be or not.

I have no idea what’s going through his head. He never smiles. He never laughs. He doesn’t flirt. His face appears as if he keeps a constant veil of armor between his expressions and the rest of the world.

His hand slowly trails all the way up my back until he’s touching the back of my neck. I feel like his hand has left marks on every single part of me he’s touched.

His lips against mine feel like everything. Like living and dying and being reborn, all at the same time.

I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to. I want “that” so much I don’t even want to eat, and he probably doesn’t realize how much I love Thanksgiving dinner. Which means I want “that” a lot, and “that” isn’t referring to the plate of food in front of me. “That” is Miles. Us. Me kissing Miles. Miles kissing me.

He’s obviously attracted to me, or he wouldn’t have kissed me. Sadly, that’s enough for me. I don’t even care if he likes me. I just want him to be attracted to me, because the liking can come later.

“If it’s been six years since you kissed a girl, then why did you kiss me? I was under the impression you didn’t even really like me. You’re really hard to read.”

Bravery. Break the wall. Ask the bold upfront questions so you know where you stand.

“It’s not that I don’t like you, Tate.” He sighs heavily and runs his hands through his hair, gripping the back of his neck. “I just don’t want to like you. I don’t want to like anyone. I don’t want to date anyone. I don’t want to love anyone. I just…” He folds his arms back across his chest and looks down at the floor.

“You don’t want to be attracted to me, but you are. You want to have sex with me, but you don’t want to date me. You also don’t want to love me. You also don’t want me to want to love you.”

I’m nervous because I’m not so sure that just sex with him is possible. Based on the way I’m drawn to him, I have a pretty good feeling sex will be the least of our problems. Yet here I sit, pretending to be fine with just sex. Maybe if it starts out this way, it’ll eventually end up being something more.

I. Love. His. Mouth. I tilt my head so I can taste more of it. He tilts his to taste more of mine. His tongue has a great memory, because it knows exactly how to do this. He drops his injured hand and rests it on my thigh, while his other hand grips the back of my head, crushing our lips together. My hands no longer have hold of his shirt. They’re exploring his arms, his neck, his back, his hair.

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.

“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.”

I love the way he groans when our bodies join together. Guys usually tend to hold back their sounds more than girls do. Not Miles. Miles wants me, and he wants me to know it, and I love that.

Seeing what I do to him is enough of a turn-on without him even touching me.

I just wasn’t expecting this overwhelming feeling of embarrassment. Not because of the way he dismissed me immediately after we had sex but rather for the way that dismissal made me feel. I thought I would want this to be strictly sex between us just as much as he does, but based on the beating my heart took in the last two minutes, I’m not so sure I’m capable of anything simple with him. There’s a small voice in the back of my head, warning me to pull away from this situation before things become too complicated with him. Unfortunately, there’s a much louder voice urging me to just go for it—telling me I deserve a little fun in my life with all the work I’ve got going on.

I love how he ends most of his questions with my name.

I’ve had crushes on guys before, hell, I’ve even been in love with guys before, but none of their touches have ever been able to make me respond the way his do.

There’s nothing in the world that compares to the feel and smell of brand-new rain.

“I’ve never had sex in a car before,” he says with a little bit of hope in his confession. “I’ve never had sex with a captain before,” I offer.

He slides his hands up the back of my top and begins to unclasp my bra, but I shake my head. “Just leave it on,” I say breathlessly. The less clothes we take off, the faster we’ll be able to get dressed if we get caught. He continues to unfasten it, despite my protest. “I don’t want to be inside you unless I can feel you against me.” Wow. Okay, then.

“People are vulnerable during sex,” he says with a shrug. “It’s easy to confuse feelings and emotions for something they aren’t, especially when eye contact is involved.”

“I asked you to do two things for me. Don’t ask about my past, and never expect a future. You’re doing both.” I nod. “Yes, Miles. You’re right. I am. Because I like you, and I know you like me, and when we’re together, it’s phenomenal, so that’s what normal people do. When they find someone they’re compatible with, they open up to them. They let them in. They want to be with them. They don’t fuck them against their kitchen table and then walk away and make them feel like complete shit.”

“Have I told you my favorite joke yet?” Cap asks. I shake my head and grab another tissue from the box in his hands, relieved at the change in subject. “Knock, knock,” he says. I didn’t expect his favorite joke to be a knock-knock joke, but I play along. “Who’s there?” “Interrupting cow,” he says. “Interrupt—” “MOO!” he yells loudly, cutting me off. I stare at him. Then I laugh. I laugh harder than I’ve laughed in a long damn time.

His mouth finds mine again, but that’s all it does. He doesn’t kiss me. Our lips touch and our breath collides and our eyes meet, but there isn’t a kiss. What our mouths are doing is so much more than that. With every thrust inside me, his lips slide over mine, and his eyes grow hungrier, but he never once kisses me. A kiss is so much easier than what we’re doing. When you kiss, you can close your eyes. You can kiss away the thoughts. You can kiss away the pain, the doubt, the shame. When you close your eyes and kiss, you protect yourself from the vulnerability. This isn’t us protecting ourselves. This is confrontation. This is a standoff. This is eye-to-eye combat. This is a dare, from me to Miles, from Miles to me. I dare you to try to stop this, we’re both silently screaming.

He lifts his head and looks down at me, his brows furrowed in a line of worry. “I should go.”

I hate how fast he leaves after.

I know I want so much more than what he’s giving me and he wants so much less than what I want to give him, but we’re both just taking what we can get for now. I try not to think about what will happen the day I can’t handle it anymore. I try not to think about all the other things I’m sacrificing by still being involved with him.

My heart is full of confusion. This thing between us has never been easy. One would think limiting oneself to just sex would be the simplest thing in the world, but it makes me question every move and every word that comes out of my mouth. I find myself analyzing every look he gives me. I don’t even know what move I’m supposed to make next. Do I lie here until he asks me to leave? I’ve never stayed the night with him before. Do I roll over and put my arms around him, hoping he’ll hold me in return until we fall asleep? I’m too scared he’ll reject me. I’m stupid. I’m a stupid, stupid girl. Why can’t this just be sex for me, too? Why can’t I come over here, give him what he wants, get what I want, and leave?

“You ever heard that expression, ‘When life gives you lemons…’?” “Make lemonade,” I say, finishing his quote. Cap looks at me and shakes his head. “That’s not how it goes,” he says. “When life gives you lemons, make sure you know whose eyes you need to squeeze them in.”

We’re both smiling. The relaxed look on his face fills me with so many emotions I can’t even begin to classify them. I’m happy, because we’re having fun together. I’m sad, because we’re having fun together. I’m angry, because we’re having fun together and it makes me want so much more of this. So much more of him.

Every time we’re together, I get a little bit more of him. Whether it’s a glimpse of his past or time spent without the sex or even time spent sleeping, he’s giving me more and more of himself, little by little. I feel like this is both good and bad. It’s good, because I want and need so much more of him, so every little bit I get is enough to satisfy me when I begin worrying about everything I don’t get from him. But it’s also bad, because every time I get a little bit more of him, another part of him grows more distant. I can see it in his eyes. He’s worried he’s giving me hope, and I’m afraid he’ll eventually just pull away completely.

So as much as I try to protect my heart from him, it’s pointless. He’s going to break it eventually, yet I continue to allow him to fill it. Every time I’m with him, he fills my heart up more and more, and the more it’s filled with pieces of him, the more painful it’ll be when he rips it out of my chest as though it never belonged there in the first place.

“If you love me more today than you loved me yesterday, then I can’t wait for tomorrow,”

“If I were capable of loving someone… it would be you.” My heart cracks with his words,

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” he says with a voice full of remorse. “But I’ll never be able to thank you enough for not giving up on me. You saw something in me that gave you hope in us, and you didn’t give up on that.

“Listen, Tate,” I tell her. “I want your mess. I want your clothes on my bedroom floor. I want your toothbrush in my bathroom. I want your shoes in my closet. I want your mediocre leftovers in my fridge.”

“Will you break rule number two with me, Tate? Because I really want to marry you.”

When her mouth meets mine again, it’s as if every last piece of my armor disintegrates and every last piece of ice surrounding the glacier that was my heart melts and evaporates. Whoever coined the phrase, I love you to death obviously never experienced the kind of love Tate and I share. If that were the case, the phrase would be I love you to life. Because that’s exactly what Tate did. She loved me back to life.

We weren’t trying to have a baby, but we also weren’t not trying. “If it happens it happens,” Tate said. It happened.