49 pages • 1 hour read
Ugly Love
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Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Tate”
On the way home from their parents’ house, Tate asks Corbin to stop at a gas station so that she can use the restroom. Miles gets out with her. She goes to the bathroom, and when she comes out, he offers to buy her candy. They linger in the candy aisle and gently hold hands. When they finally head back out to the car, they make up the excuse that the line was long. Tate admires Corbin and Miles’s work as airline pilots, but Miles says her job as a nurse is more admirable. Tate thinks she’s going to have a very hard time following Miles’s rules.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Miles, Six Years Ago”
Miles and Rachel amend their rule about not being intimate while their parents are home. They are physically intimate as long as they are behind a locked door. They pledge to uphold the second rule of no intercourse, but they add a third rule about not sneaking around at night for fear of Lisa catching them. They share feelings of guilt and shame because they have been living under the same roof for a month and are considered, on the outside, as family. However, when their parents go out of town for the weekend, Miles and Rachel play house, take a shower together, and eventually have sex.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Tate”
Once Corbin is asleep, Tate sneaks into Miles’s apartment. They have sex, and Miles performs oral sex on Tate. They are enjoying themselves, but Miles dismisses Tate abruptly. He has to be gone for nine days to fly. As soon as Tate dresses, Miles asks her to lock the door on her way out. Tate feels strange about the situation even though it’s exactly what they agreed to do.
Corbin is talking in the living room. He thinks Tate is still asleep, so she goes downstairs to the lobby and sees Cap. Cap asks about Thanksgiving and can tell Tate is falling in love with Miles. When she wants to change the subject, Cap tells her about the time he found a body on the third floor.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Miles, Six Years Ago”
Rachel asks Miles if he thinks the only reason that they like each other so much is because it’s forbidden. Miles likes that she questions everything but reassures her that he’s loved her from the second they met. At that time, he didn’t know how forbidden their love would be. When they kiss, Rachel questions if they just like kissing, not necessarily kissing each other. Miles agrees that kissing in general is fun, but for him, kissing Rachel is different. Miles “hurts” when he’s not with Rachel and realizes that falling in love is “damn painful.”
Chapter 15 Summary: “Tate”
Miles invites Tate to go shopping with him. Tate just got off a long shift at the hospital but wants to see him, so she goes with him to pick out curtains for his apartment. On the way there, Tate sees a man without a home and wishes she had her purse to give him money. In the store, Miles quickly finds the curtains he wants and buys a rug as well. While the lady assisting them gets the curtains from the display, Miles and Tate disappear behind a folding screen and kiss. Then, Miles pays and sneakily buys a blanket. He gives the blanket to the man they passed on the way in.
When they get back, Miles tells Tate to go to her apartment while he hangs the curtains. She has to leave for work again soon, so she eats dinner while waiting. Miles invites her over, and she brings him dinner. When Tate arrives, she’s surprised to see how much life and character the curtains have brought to Miles’s living room, but he has put the rug in an odd place. Miles wants to christen it with her before he puts it where he intends to. He is starving but knows Tate has a limited amount of time, so he opts to have sex with her first and eat dinner later.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
The themes of Relationship Boundaries Versus Emotional Walls and Fear and Control as Roadblocks to Love come to the fore. Miles breaks his rule with Rachel, foreshadowing that the rules he set with Tate will also be broken. Miles’s desperation to control his feelings and intimate situations comes across in his interactions with his lovers. For example, in Chapter 12, he says of Rachel: “I kiss her again, not even giving her the chance to respond. I don’t need to hear her say the words to me until she’s ready, and I don’t want to hear her tell me that the way I feel is wrong” (105). He wants her to know how he feels and to be in the moment, regardless of what she might think or say. He doesn’t want anything to ruin it.
He does the same thing in Chapter 13 with Tate, causing Tate to feel unsure of herself: “Once we’re in the bedroom, I begin to grow apprehensive. Mostly because this is his place, and this whole situation is pretty much on his terms, and I feel a little bit at a disadvantage” (113). Miles is controlling and self-centered at times, prioritizing his desire for control over the feelings of other people. Miles’s desire for control stems from his fear of lacking control. All the worst moments in his life were completely beyond his control, namely, the deaths of his mother and infant son.
Miles is emotionally withholding with Tate, which Hoover juxtaposes with Miles’s effusive romantic expression with Rachel. However, both storylines embody the theme of The Duality of Pleasure and Pain. While this relationship dynamic may be frustrating for Tate, she does have reason to believe Miles is capable of change. In Chapter 15, Miles’s addition of curtains to his barren apartment is symbolic to Tate because “even though it’s a slight change, it feels huge” (138). It took Miles four years to put up any personal effects in his apartment, and Tate’s comment about his apartment’s spareness prompts him to domesticate his space. This small change gives Tate hope as a sign of more significant changes to come.
Additionally, the new home décor shows that Miles is beginning to open his private sphere to Tate. The gesture implies that he wants her to be comfortable, just as he previously sacrificed the nicer bedroom for Rachel’s comfort. However, Miles consistently sends Tate mixed signals, signifying that he is not ready to take down his emotional walls.
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By Colleen Hoover
