Page 12 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

“No, it’s not— I’m not—” I stop to sigh. “Just be normal, please. Talk to me like a normal person.”

He sits back in his chair, petulant once again. This dinner is both a mistake and a miracle. I want to devastate him in a thousand ways. I hate myself for being so attracted to him but not nearly enough to stop. “You ghosted me,” he accuses, his demeanor changing on a dime.

“You didn’t message me either.”

“You’re the one who said you’d call.”

So I had. I touch my neck, tucking the chain back into my shirt. “I was thinking . I had to look at all my options, Noel.”

He glares at me. We both know I’m full of shit.

He says nothing, instead turning to his neglected wine glass and taking a long pull from it.

I want to tell him to slow down but I don’t know if he’ll take that as making him and I’m a bit afraid of this power, this dynamic he’s pigeonholing me into.

Is he really going to do whatever I say if I lean into this? Is that what I want?

And again I hate myself—for being attracted to the idea of it, of the control I could have and exert. And again, not nearly enough for it to have any meaningful effect on me.

“Noel,” I say softly. “Stop.”

He does. He puts the glass on the table and looks expectantly at me. Jesus Christ. It cannot be this easy.

“The answer is yes,” I tell him, because the torture isn’t fun anymore.

“I’ll move in with you.” He beams so broadly and happily that I feel like I have to make an addendum to this.

“This isn’t serious, though. Right? Like, this is still just.

..a casual thing between us. Whatever the fuck this is. ”

His expression quickly turns to one of annoyance. “Oh my god, don’t flatter yourself,” he snaps. “I don’t want anything with you except, as you so eloquently put it, whatever the fuck this is . I think I’ve made that pretty clear.”

“I’m just checking,” I say cautiously. “You’re...you know, you’re just so young, and I don’t want to?—”

“Can I drink my wine?” he interrupts loudly.

“Jesus, yes. Of course.”

He snaps up his glass and drains it, and I don’t say anything to stop him this time.

He sets it down with a clatter and rounds back on me.

“Let me make myself even more clear,” he says.

“So there’s absolutely no confusion, here’s a list of the things I want.

One: I want you to move in and pay my rent.

Two: I want to keep fucking you, casually . Three?—”

I notice that we have attracted the interest of the couple of the nearest to us. “Can you keep your voice down?” I hiss.

“—I want to explore kink with you,” he finishes, as if we’ve never spoken. “Like I told you before.” And then he looks at the bottle of wine pointedly.

I pour him another goddamn glass, even though I think he might already be drunk and he probably doesn’t need it, especially if this is how he gets when he’s inebriated.

I don’t feel very in control of this situation at all.

It feels like I’m behind the wheel of a car spinning out on black ice, actually.

Is he acting this way because he wants to be punished later?

Well, joke’s on him, because I’m not going home with him tonight.

Why does this feel so volatile ?

“We need to set some boundaries,” I assert to him.

“Like?”

I lower my voice. “Like I don’t think we should be doing this sort of thing outside of the bedroom.” My face is hot. “It’s way too much.”

“I’m just playing with you, Luca.” The tip of his boot nudges my leg beneath the table.

Once again he’s softened; the brat prince has dissolved before my eyes.

I don’t know if it’s the alcohol, an act, or if he’s really this up and down all the time.

“It’s just—you know, it’s fun. For me. For us.

” His amber eyes search mine. “Are you uncomfortable?”

“I don’t know.”

Our food comes at last, which puts a temporary halt to the conversation.

If Noel has any aversion or objection to what I’ve gotten him, it doesn’t show.

He digs right in with the appetite of someone verging on starving.

For a few minutes we eat in a silence that is not altogether uncomfortable until Noel speaks again.

“I really was just playing,” he tells me. “We don’t have to. I don’t want to make it weird.”

“I don’t know,” I say again. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Me either. I told you.”

He’s smiling. He has sauce on his chin, and without thinking I reach across the table and swipe it from his chin. And, why the hell not, I lick the sauce from my thumb, because I’ve put my mouth on almost every inch of him and I know it’ll provoke a reaction from him.

And it does. Noel’s gaze widens and his cheeks flush a little, dark lashes sweeping his cheek as he ducks his head. I realize he’s embarrassed. “I haven’t eaten all day,” he mutters, a little defensively. “I had class in the morning and then I was working on commissions right until you texted me.”

“Commissions?”

“Yeah. How do you think I pay for school and live around here?” He’s wiping his mouth furiously with the cloth napkin, turning his fair skin red.

“I guess I figured your parents helped you out.”

“Bzzt! Wrong.”

“What sort of commissions do you do?” I ask him curiously.

He pulls out his phone. “People’s characters. You know, for video games and role playing and stuff. Here.”

Noel sets his phone on the table and turns it around to show me an Instagram account.

It must be the one he reserves for the artwork he does for other people, and I see, very quickly, that he’s a phenomenal artist. Not that I had doubts, necessarily—to make it to your final year of art school is no mean feat, and certainly one I was never cut out for nor had any desire to accomplish—but to see how talented Noel is another thing entirely.

He works in a few different styles, likely depending on how much the client pays him, but the standout are the detailed, painterly works in a semi-realistic style.

Headshots, full body, huge, detailed pieces with backgrounds, he seems to do it all, and very well.

“Jesus,” I mutter, scrolling through. “Noel, this is incredible. How much do you make doing this?”

“Depends on the piece, but I average around two hundred per,” he says modestly. “The detailed pieces with backgrounds are more rare, but I can make up to five hundred off of those. I’ve been doing it since high school, so I have a decent following.”

“I can see that.” Decent translates to nearly a hundred thousand. “Is this what you want to do for a living?” I ask him, reluctantly handing his phone back. “Is this why you’re going to school?”

“God, no.” He makes a face as he slips his phone back into his pocket. “If I did, I wouldn’t have bothered with school.”

“Then what?” Because I know, as well as any artist does, that art for a living can be a crapshoot. That pulling it off is a pipe dream, and a BFA is often a complete waste of time and money. I am lucky that I can do what I do and make a decent living of it, without having spent a dime on education.

“I want to be a medical illustrator,” he tells me. “That’s why I’m minoring in biology. I’d have a better shot if I went to grad school for it, but I’m hoping I can get into it after graduating in May.”

It’s such a far cry from the work I’ve just seen, that the confession takes me off guard. And yet it seems strangely fitting for him, too. Drawing gross anatomical illustrations sounds exactly up Noel’s alley, when I think about it. I smile at him. “That’s pretty cool.”

He returns to his dinner without another word, but I glimpse the smile on his lips as he ducks his head, his hair bracketing his face once more.

After dinner I offer to drive Noel back to his apartment, but he declines, so instead I walk with him to North Station.

He’s definitely buzzed, and he keeps grabbing onto my arm as he continues to find all the slippery places on the sidewalk to stumble over until I tell him he can just hold on to me if he wants.

So he loops elbows with me and now I’m not so concerned he’ll dent his skull on the curb.

It’s snowing again, but not the kind that will stick; it’s not quite cold enough.

The flakes melt immediately in Noel’s dark, disheveled hair, and I must resist the urge to set it to rights.

So many little things like that add up to intimacy and I don’t seem to know where the line is, precisely.

Maneuvering a onetime encounter is one thing, but what about an ongoing with-benefits situation?

Do you hold them at arm’s length until you both decide you’re in the mood, and then the walls come crashing down? I don’t have the first clue.

Noel turns to me in front of the Bobby Orr statue. “When are you moving in, then? I need to let the building manager know.”

“Whenever.” I do a quick mental flip-through of my work diary. “How much notice do you need?”

“Not that much. A few days at least.”

“I could do Wednesday. I don’t have anything going on.” And I didn’t have all that much to move. Everything I owned could fit in the back of the truck. “I’ll have to buy a bed,” I realize. “Mattress, bed frame. Some other furniture.” That was annoying .

“If you can’t get it by then, you can sleep in my bed.” Coquettish, peeking at me from beneath mascaraed lashes.

I’m sure I’m going to be spending plenty of time in his bed either way. “I’ll see what I can organize.”

“Well, since we’re making it official.” From the pocket of his coat he withdraws a pair of keys on a ring, handing them to me. “The big one is the apartment, obviously,” he tells me. “The smaller one is for the mailbox.”

“Thanks.” I attach them to my own key ring before I forget and lose them. “I guess I’ll see you next Wednesday, then?”

“Not much of me. I have class all day, so I won’t be able to help.”