Finding Cinderella Maybe Someday

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