Page 42 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

LUCA

It’s silent in the truck but for the occasional directions Noel gives me, and I don’t even bother to try breaking it.

The glances I steal over at him yield nothing.

He stares out the window with his face locked down and his sharp jaw set.

It’s a far cry from his hysterical state just minutes before.

The screaming, the crying, the throwing things and then maybe worse: the deadly quiet beyond the door that made me even sicker than the meltdown did, not knowing if this time he hurt himself in a way he couldn’t come back from.

I want to say something, but I don’t know what to say. I want to reach for his hand, but I keep it to myself. I don’t know what we’re about to walk into. I don’t know what’s going on. It doesn’t seem like he cares to tell me.

We reach the southernmost reaches of Malden’s Linden neighborhood in less than twenty minutes.

The house that’s curb I pull alongside at is a story in itself.

It’s a narrow, single-story colonial, one of many like it on its street here, though in far more dire condition than its neighbors.

Its red paint is noticeably peeling even in the fading light of dusk.

The chain-link fence that surrounds it is falling apart, the gates in front of both the driveway and the walkway sitting askance on rusting hinges.

The lawn, from what I can see between melted spots in the snow, is more dirt than dead grass.

Inside the detached garage, which gapes open, is an old Cutlass up on cinderblocks.

I realize this place is a stone’s throw away from the house in Revere, maybe ten minutes tops. For some reason it startles me.

I turn off the truck, and the interior falls silent and still. “This is it?” I ask Noel.

“Yes.” He opens the door. “Stay here. I won’t be long.”

I obey this directive for all of five seconds before I get out, too.

The truck’s headlights flash as I lock it behind me, stepping onto the sidewalk and following Noel through the gate, which squeals in protest as he knees it open.

He glances once at me when he notices my attendance, his nose scrunching in what might be annoyance, but he says nothing.

At the door, he knocks once, calls out, “Mom?” and then turns the knob. It’s not locked. We both step inside.

It’s not nice in here.

The first thing that hits me is the smell of stale tobacco—the unmistakable, eye watering stench of a lifelong smoker.

The walls, perhaps once white, have long since yellowed, and their paint is warped and peeling above the dented and dust-coated baseboards.

The ceilings have actual holes in them, places where the plaster sheet has been torn away to reveal the old, warped planks beneath.

Did Noel grow up here? It is a sad, horrifying thought. I hope it’s not true.

We walk through the small entry hall into the living room with a carpet so filthy that I can’t tell if it was originally gray or if it has been turned this color over the years, covered in stains and other detritus.

There’s an old and still ceiling fan in this room with its blades wilted like an unwatered plant, and from its filthy globe emits a sickly orange light.

The TV, a sizable flatscreen that looks new and shiny compared to the rest of the neglected furniture, blares some reality show or another.

I don’t recognize it. It’s not one of the ones that Demi’s addicted to.

On the tattered couch sits a woman who is probably only a decade older than me—I can tell by the smoothness of her hands, their relative youthfulness—but her face has aged well before its time thanks to a combination of substances I can only imagine.

Her skin is wan and papery, pitted with sores.

She looks like Noel, the same brown-black hair with his same narrow, sharp features, but her eyes are a piercing blue.

They pass right over me and settle on her son.

“There it is,” she snarls. Her voice is raspy and deep. She’s clutching a beer, her cigarette perched delicately between two fingers. And did she really just refer to her son as it? “Finally. A thousand goddamn messages later. It knows better than to make me wait.”

Noel’s face betrays no emotion whatsoever. In fact, he’s as composed as I’ve ever seen him. It is an eerie contrast to earlier. “I was busy,” he says.

She doesn’t care. She’s already holding out her empty hand. “Let’s make this quick. I’m meeting someone in an hour.”

Noel’s hand goes to his pocket before he pauses. His gaze is locked with his mother’s. “This is for pills?” he says, and not in a way that indicates surprise. He sounds more resigned, weary. “Not groceries? Or bills?”

His mother’s nostrils flare. She’s not accustomed, it seems, to being questioned by her child. Her open hand balls into a fist. “None of its concern.”

He raises his chin slightly. “It’s my money.”

It happens so fast. One moment she’s sitting there glaring at him with a disgusted fury that is sickening in its familiarity, the next she’s on her feet, the beer bottle soaring through the air in the rough direction of Noel’s head.

I react just in time to grab him and pull him towards me, out of the bottle’s trajectory.

It shatters harmlessly against the far wall.

His mother takes notice of me at last. “Who the fuck is this?” she hisses at her son. “This a cop? It brought a fucking cop to my house?”

I open my mouth to tell her that if there was anyone who deserved to be busted by the police it was her, but Noel glares me into silence as he wrests himself from my arms. “Fine,” he’s saying. “Fine. Take your fucking money.”

From his wallet he extracts what looks like a few hundred in cash and tosses at her. The bills waft into her lap where she nearly drops her cigarette in an effort to scrabble for them. “Only three hundred?” She’s scornful.

“It’s all I’ve got right now.”

She mutters something like it’ll do and reaches for her phone on the badly stained coffee table. She ashes into a tray. “It can go now. I have phone calls to make.”

He doesn’t say goodbye. He turns and stalks out, the security door banging shut behind him.

I stare at this woman, his mother—if she’s even deserving of that title—whatever it is she may be, debating on if I should say anything and then deciding it’s just not worth it.

I don’t want to make things worse for Noel.

After all, what’s there to say to a woman who calls her own son it ?

Outside Noel is yanking on the locked truck’s door as if he is capable of overpowering it through sheer force of will, or desperation, or whatever intense emotion he is feeling at this moment.

I don’t bother to scold him even though I hate it when people do that.

I just unlock the door with my key fob and let him scramble into the cab.

When I join him, he says, “I wish you didn’t come in.”

“I was scared,” I tell him.

“Of what?”

“Not of.” I turn the key in the ignition. “For.”

“What? Me?”

“Yes.” I look over at him. “For you.”

Noel’s studying me, his beautiful face lit by the dash lights—and he is beautiful, still, even after everything. Swollen lips, red eyes, flushed cheeks, messy hair and all. He is the only person I’ve ever met who is pretty when he cries, no matter how hard.

He’s dry-eyed right now, though. He seems remarkably self-possessed despite the events of the last hour. He turns away from me to stare out the window as I pull away from the curb. “Can we just go somewhere?” he mumbles.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Just not home.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Anywhere but home.”

And because I can’t think of anywhere else to take him, I drive the ten minutes east to Revere Beach—that famous and ugly three mile strip of sand butting up against the brownish waters of the Broad Sound, strewn with as many cigarette butts and beer bottles as it is with shells and seagulls.

I wonder if this place consumed as many of Noel’s childhood summers as it did my own.

If anyone took him down here to wade and play. If anyone bothered or cared.

My heart aches for him.

He doesn’t say anything about my choice as I park in one of the many empty spots on the boulevard.

We’re both quiet as we get out, and I follow him as he makes his way across the half-frozen sand in the last dying rays of the setting sun, dirty snowbanks at our backs.

When he stops and sits down at last, so do I.

There will be sand all over the truck when this is done, but that’s not a big deal.

Noel stares out at the gentle waves, the icy breeze buffeting our faces and snapping at our cheeks.

His arms are wrapped around one knee, the leg that wasn’t tattooed.

The other is stretched out in front of him.

The cold sand probably feels good against it, where it must seep through the fabric of his sweats.

“She calls me it, ” he says eventually. “Did you catch that?”

I don’t say anything. My chest is heavy.

“I can’t save her,” he goes on. “My mom.”

I am silent as I watch him, the way the fading sunlight picks out the brilliant amber of his eyes and highlights his angular profile, the pout of his lips and the slope of his nose.

“I keep thinking something will be different.” He looks down, sticking one finger into the sand.

“Enough money and things will change. That she will—I don’t know, stop.

Stop the drugs, stop threatening to kill herself.

Start caring. I don’t know why. It’s really fucking stupid.

” He draws a spiral, first one way and then the other.

“I thought once I graduated and got a job I could fix everything.” His finger pauses. “I guess that was selfish of me.”