Page 25 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

NOEL

“Tell me everything ,” Danika demands the moment I slide into the booth across from her, slamming her tray of food down for emphasis.

Jamil squeezes in beside me, elbowing me so I’ll move over.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and it’s the first time I’ve seen either of them since my birthday, though Danika’s been hounding me for details ever since I let on that my Friday night was going to be eventful.

I’m beginning to think she’s more invested in my no-strings-attached situation than I am.

I pick out my biscuit and begin shredding it. “What’s there to say?” I offer casually, infuriatingly, just because I can and it’s funny.

It incenses her, of course. “The fucking homemade dinner? Hello?”

“Yeah?”

Jamil snorts into his drink. “Just put her out of her misery. She’s salivating. ”

“I’m not salivating,” she huffs back with a toss of her long braids.

Today they’re threaded with red and pink beads, and they clink and clatter against each other with each movement.

“I just wanna know what the deal is. I thought it was just a friends with benefits thing. What kind of fuck buddy makes you a romantic dinner?”

“Who said it was romantic?” I interject. “Who said we didn’t just sit there and eat like normal people and then went about our lives?”

“ Did you?”

I finally put a piece of biscuit in my mouth and it takes me a minute to swallow it. The biscuits here are so good, but man are they thick. I wash it down with my soda. “No. Not really.”

Danika leans forward. “So?”

“She’s becoming a fujoshi before our eyes,” Jamil observes idly. “She’s getting off to this.”

“Shut up ,” she returns in disgust. “My curiosity comes from a place of concern and nothing more. Or less.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I complain. “Do you want a fucking gory play-by-play of all the details? Like, how first he pushed me against the bedroom door and shoved his tongue down my throat before he blindfolded me and?—”

“No,” Danika interrupts loudly. “We definitely don’t. ”

“Speak for yourself.” Jamil’s leaning forward. “Blindfold?”

“A massage candle was involved,” I add.

“What the hell is a massage candle? ”

“It melts into oil instead of wax, I guess.” I shrug. “You get the picture.”

Danika sits back and picks up her drink. “Huh.”

“I didn’t know, either.”

There’s a beat of silence, Jamil and Danika exchanging glances while I continue to pick slowly at my food. He clears his throat. “Well, I guess you do have to admit it does sound a little…romantic.”

I sigh. “Oh, god. Not you, too.”

“What? What’s wrong with that? Is it such a bad thing? I mean, he seems like a nice guy if he did all that for you. My boyfriend never makes me anything like that—instead we had a stupid expensive dinner at that steakhouse by Government Center?—”

“It’s totally a bad thing,” Danika interrupts. “He’s like a whole ass decade older than Noel, for starters.”

“Not this shit again.”

“Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not morally or ethically correct?—”

I listen to them bicker with half an ear as I pull my chicken apart.

I haven’t eaten all day and I’m feeling lightheaded as hell, but I’m not exactly hungry; I have work I need to do and I’m not really in the mood for this particular conversation.

Dissecting my sex life with a man they don’t even know when they have only a threadbare understanding of our dynamic, a dynamic I don’t even fully understand myself.

Feelings that I get confused if I think about too hard: like something just on the tip of my tongue, some movement in the corner of my eye, a glimmer of comprehension that flickers at the edge of my awareness.

Holding.

Being held.

My free hand slides up my opposite arm. There’s no pain, no dull ache; my self-inflicted bruises are fading and I haven’t been hurting myself lately.

Too busy, too distracted? That usually doesn’t stop me because it’s not exactly a time-consuming process to bite yourself.

No knives or razors needed, no clean up involved.

The fact that it is so easy, quick and dirty is why I latched onto as my main implement of self-harm.

Which is what it is, technically—my old therapist told me so—but I don’t really think about it that way. It’s just a thing that I do, that I have to do, to either punish myself or get the bad feelings out.

Except lately I haven’t had the impulse or need. Nope, those bruises are almost all gone. There are other ones but those are from Luca, imposed upon me in very different places on my body and for very different reasons. And those ones I like. They can stay.

“Noel.” Danika’s addressing me and I turn to her, eyebrows raised as I latch onto my straw.

“Forget the age gap. It’s not even about that.

” Because I must’ve appeared so worried about that when I invited the guy to live with me and fuck me, too, but whatever.

“You just got out of a really shitty relationship. That’s the main thing. ”

“I know,” I say sourly. “I was there for it, believe it or not.”

She forges on bravely, ignoring my tone altogether. “ And I think you should just take some time before you rush into something else. Take some time for yourself, you know, get used to being alone again and do some healing.”

“I agree,” Jamil says with some reluctance. “The last few weeks you were with Jordan were really bad, dude. I mean, even from an outsider perspective. We were both really worried about you.”

Here again he exchanges a look with Danika and I get a strange, almost dissociative sort of feeling, the kind when you just know everyone in a room knows something you don’t. I can already feel my hackles rising as I look between them. “Worried how?” I say warily. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, Noel—you know.” Jamil shrugs and goes back to his food. This isn’t what he’s good with, the touchy-feely shit, which is why I usually appreciate him as a good counterbalance to my insanity, but now I’m just annoyed.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Come on.” Danika again. “We aren’t blind. And you’re not that unaware. You were in the fucking trenches last year, my guy. I mean, I was starting to think you really might kill your?—”

I drop my arm on the table with a bang and it makes them both start. “I get it,” I say, a little too loud. “I was fucking crazy. Okay? It was my first serious relationship, and it blew up and I was crashing out. I know. I remember.”

Crying every single day, hurting myself every single day, calling one or the other or both of them every single day threatening all sorts of stupid things.

Text messages I have since deleted because I couldn’t bear to face the shame of their existence.

That I had said those things to my own friends, of all people, all embarrassing and over the top in their threats of self-destruction.

Of course I fucking know —but for some reason it’s worse knowing they were talking about it, conspiring about it, probably wondering how on earth to get rid of me once and for all because I am too much, I’m always too fucking much.

I take a deep breath and try to steer myself away from that train of thought because it goes straight to rock bottom.

It careens off the rails and explodes into spectacular flames.

You’re okay. You’re safe. Everything’s fine.

Nothing’s ruined. Mantra on repeat. Mindfulness, a skill I’ve failed to maintain in any way, shape or form, but I give it a fucking shot.

My friends are still here, expressing their concerns, after all.

They haven’t given up on me just yet even though I am badly behaved and impossible.

They’re both looking at me. “You don’t have to get all defensive,” Jamil says eventually.

“Sorry,” I say. “Just . . . I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool.”

“Can I talk without you freaking out?” Danika asks.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“I’m worried you’ll get involved with this guy and he’ll break your heart,” she tells me frankly. “And I don’t know if you’re going to survive that kind of shit twice in a row. The way you were before with Jordan, the tantrums and meltdowns?—”

“For the millionth time, it’s not like that.”

“And he’s still married. He could just be using you to get back at his wife in some weird kind of way. ”

“Good news!” I clap my hands together. “He’s not into me. He’s just a nice, empathetic guy who wanted to make me some Greek food. The sex is a mutual and consensual arrangement. We’re both just rebounding.”

She doesn’t waver. “Noel, I know you. You could fall in love with a walking piece of shit as long as they gave you the time of day once in a while. A good-looking man who is living with you, being sweet to you and dicking you down?” When I don’t say anything, she says, “I’m just worried.

We both are. Maybe it would be better to keep your distance from him.

Get to a better place with yourself first.”

I look down at the table. “I’ll be careful,” I hear myself say, even though I know it’s a lie. “Really.”

When I get home, I arrange myself on the couch with my iPad in an oversized sweater and a pair of shorts that are far too short for the season or weather.

Luca and Amelia are gone, which means he must be out walking her, and that puts me at the best vantage point when he walks in.

I’m so glad I invested in a home IPL machine because it means they’re smooth and perfect with only occasional upkeep from me, and I need Luca to take a good look at them.

I need him to tell me where my tattoo should go.

It’s fucking cold, though, and I crank up the thermostat a good five degrees. I am so damn sick of winter.

As I continue working on sketching my idea—the one Luca insisted I design myself, refusing to weigh in even a little—my mind keeps going back to what my friends said. That he must be into me.