Page 46 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

“It’s not even the things that she did.” My words are halting.

Sort of crying and sort of not. My throat is so painfully tight.

“It’s the things she didn’t do. Like, give a shit, ever.

She was always on something or another. Or fucking around with guys.

Different ones, all the time. And none of them ever cared, either, which is probably for the best. My childhood was just—it was fucking nothing.

When I look back, I can’t think of anything except how little there was. There’s nothing to remember.”

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I’m really fucking sorry.”

“I used to wish she would hit me,” I say.

“Because that would be something. Instead of nothing. Instead of just being ignored, all the time. Like I didn’t exist. But you know, I—” My voice catches, and I swallow hard.

“I love her anyway. I want her to get better so bad, even though I know she won’t.

She has always been like this. So yeah, Jordan and whoever can think whatever they want, but I guess I’m not gonna give up on her.

Gonna just keep...hoping. Even if it’s stupid. ”

“Not stupid,” Luca corrects me. “It’s not stupid at all, baby. ”

I lower my gaze. It skims off of his broad, sexy mouth and trails down to the moth inked to his throat and stays there.

His chest rises and falls steadily. “I wasn’t jealous of Killian,” I say quietly.

“Or Demi. I mean I was, but that’s not why I was upset.

It was—it was the fact you didn’t claim me in front of either of them.

And I thought—I mean, after what we did on Saturday night?—”

“Oh, Noel.” His lips touch my forehead. “I’m sorry. I did want to. I just didn’t know if you wanted me to. I copped out.”

“What part of asking to be yours doesn’t compute?”

“Yeah, I get that now . You know I’m not so good at this shit. I’m a moron.”

“You aren’t,” I tell him affectionately. “Just weirdly obtuse, sometimes.”

Luca sits up, catching his phone in his hands as it slides from his chest. “You know I admire you a lot, right?” he asks, his gaze catching mine. “The things you’ve done and accomplished, even dealing with all the bullshit on your plate—it’s incredible. I wish I had an ounce of your resilience.”

I blink a few times at him as my mouth snaps shut once more.

He renders me speechless so often, makes me have to really fucking think about what I have to say sometimes.

But to this, once again, I’ve got nothing.

I just look at him because I have never once in my life thought myself resilient.

Only fragile, and I do fall to pieces an awful lot.

I did it just last night. I did it just a couple days ago.

There are so many instances of it that I can’t name and number them all; only the biggest ones stick out in my mind, the ones with the most dire consequences.

But it’s true that I’ve never let it stop me.

Even when I thought I was going to die, even when I wanted to hurt myself to the point of ripping myself apart.

Even when it felt like my heart was breaking, stopping, and my lungs couldn’t inflate anymore and every process in my body was shutting down—I managed to pick myself up and keep going anyway. In spite of it all. Somehow.

Luca lets me process this with that steady patience that is all his, and I love him all the more for that.

I love that he accepts my faults and flaws while still wanting to push me to better myself.

He is the light to my dark, as corny as it sounds.

That’s how it feels. He has brightened my life and cleared away shadows that have cast a pall over me for so fucking long that I didn’t even realize they were shadows.

I thought it was just the way things were.

There’s a moment before he picks up his phone again and types.

I hear woosh sound as he sends off his message—he doesn’t keep his phone on silent all the time like I do—and I hear notifications pour in.

There’s a smile twitching on his lips as he reads them.

“What are they saying?” I ask, unable to help myself.

“Well, Killian’s saying he knew it all along, could sense the vibe in Killington. Which I guess was pretty obvious.” Was it? I have to fucking wonder. “And Jacob’s congratulating me on coming out of the closet a second time, and Lael’s just said ‘lol gay’ and?—”

“Okay, I get the picture.” I’m smiling, too .

“Killian wants to do brunch on Sunday.” Luca looks at me. “With the whole gang. Do you want to come?”

“Oh.” I am shy, suddenly. “Am I invited?”

“He said any plus one’s, but even if he didn’t, I’d ask you to come.” He leans over to kiss me and, seeing the hesitation on my face, is hasty to reassure me. “It’ll be different this time. No one’s going to be drunk and I’ll be all over you. We’ll be disgusting, me and you.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Absolutely.” He gets out of bed and pulls me along with him. “Come on. We’ve got time for a shower before you go to class.”

I have a boyfriend. Actually.

Luca is finally mine, and he likes all of me, even the bad parts of me, the dysregulated parts that need working on—and I know that they do, I want to work more on it, will make therapy a priority once I graduate.

I won’t just be doing it for me, I’ll be doing it for him, too.

I’m not a hopeless case, either. I’ve done this before and made it work.

Fuck, I’ve never been so happy.

And not even my friends can nay say it too much when I meet them for coffee later that afternoon.

Though Danika is a little more begrudging in her congratulations than Jamil is, who seems to see it entirely as a good thing with literally no downsides whatsoever, so of course we’re in total alignment.

What downsides could there be, anyway? Everything’s coming up Underwood, far as I’m concerned.

“Wasn’t he just upsetting you over the weekend?” Danika says skeptically. “I seem to remember receiving an extremely drunk text from you bawling your head off about it.”

“It was a misunderstanding.” I wave my hand. “We figured it out. You know, he just didn’t realize that I wanted the same things that he did, and now we do.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy.”

Of course she’s still dubious but she gives me a smile, and I return it gratefully.

At the end of the day, her and Jamil are good friends to me, better than I deserve after my antics over the last year or so.

I need to work on making them more of a priority too and not lose myself entirely in Luca, tempting as it is.

I do tend to do that, become absorbed in relationships.

Fuck, am I gonna go on some kind of self-improvement journey?

I used to think it was cheesy when people actively pursued those kinds of things but now I can see the merit in it, all of it sort of falling into place with the rest of the pieces of my life.

Maybe this is the part when things finally start looking up for me.

“You know who isn’t happy?” Jamil gulps whatever sugar-shit abomination of a drink he’s swigging, ice clattering in the plastic cup as he sets it back down on the table. “Our good pal Jordan.”

Danika and I lean forward simultaneously. “Spill,” she orders .

“Him and Kris broke up,” he affirms. “Took each other out of their bios and everything.”

“Damn. That was quick. ”

“Right? The way he was groping that kid on campus I thought they were still in their honeymoon phase.” Jamil shrugs. “Something must’ve happened.”

Contemplatively I chew on my straw. “Or they were just pretending.”

Both of their heads swivel towards me. “Pretending what?” Dani asks.

“That everything was fine,” I say. “That’s what me and him used to do, even though we were breaking up and getting back together every other week.”

“Yeah, but it was obvious that it wasn’t ,” she points out. Jamil nods.

“That’s because you’re close to me. None of us know Kris that well. And we don’t really run in Jordan’s circles anymore, so?—”

“Hey, why aren’t you pumping your fist?” Danika interrupts, almost suspiciously. “Now’s the perfect time to revel in that idiot’s misery. You know, celebrate the fact he’s gonna die alone and all that.”

It really is. But I guess I can’t find it in myself to be so smug and that’s different.

Any other day of the week I would right back to stalking Jordan’s socials and fabricating a whole timeline of events based on whatever garbage he posted during the waning weeks of his relationship, but now I just don’t give a shit.

There’s none of that sick, roiling feeling in my stomach I used to get whenever I thought about him or tried to look at his Instagram or scrolled past his name in my phone.

In fact today is the first time I’ve thought about Jordan in any meaningful sort of way.

And the thoughts just bypass me without much feeling and it’s nice, actually, to not feel like puking just hearing his name or thinking about who he is or isn’t bedding.

I’m not relieved, I’m not anything . I literally nothing him and that in itself is a great fucking feeling.

Holy shit, I’ve moved on at last without even realizing I did.

It just sort of slipped my mind. Like he stopped existing for me.

And of course, no shortage of credit goes to Luca.

But maybe, just maybe , I’ve done some growing on my own, too.

I’d like to think that’s the case. That maybe that big old hole in my chest has closed an nth of a degree.

Then again I was losing my shit just last night so maybe not.

It’s probably just the effect Luca has on me, being claimed, being his.

I do want to be better, though. Genuinely. I want to be worth his admiration. I want to be this resilient and capable person who Luca seems to think I am.

Danika and Jamil are still looking at me and waiting for an answer. “Don’t worry,” I say at last. “He’ll find a new victim in no time at all. He is, unfortunately, good looking enough.”

“He’s not that great. I always thought you were out of his league, Noel. Whatever else I can say about Luca, he is fucking hot.”

“Kris was a major downgrade for him,” Jamil agrees. He’s taken the lid off his cup and ice crunches between his teeth. “He probably closed his eyes and pretended it was you.”

“I know that ,” I say mildly. “But I made up the difference in being the craziest boyfriend he could’ve ever hoped for. I scarred him for life, probably.”

“Which he deserves,” he says loyally.

“Which he deserves,” I agree. My iced coffee is almost empty, but I chase the last of it anyway and delight my friends with the high-pitched squeak of air and remaining dregs being sucked through a tortured straw.

“Can I ask you something?” Danika asks over the cacophony.

“What do you and Luca even talk about? Like, what do you guys do, beyond fucking each other’s brains out?

Sorry,” she adds when I glance at her, and I guess my face must look some kind of way because she sounds a little meek.

“I just wonder what you two have in common, I guess.”

I drop my coffee cup. “Just because he’s a few years older than me?” I’m so tired of the rhetoric and I know my voice conveys this. “Seriously?”

“Don’t get in a snit,” she fires back, tapping the table. “Look, I’m just curious. You spend a lot of time with him but you don’t talk to us much about him. It’s just bare minimum stuff. Remember when you said you were gonna use and abuse him until he fucked off? And now he’s your boyfriend.”

“So?” I’m sulking a little. It’s all so pointed and critical.

“So what changed? How did he graduate from masturbatory sleeve to love of your life? ”

She waits, and I finally answer. “I never feel like I don’t have anything to say to him and I never feel like I have to be a certain way around him.

He likes me the way I am, you know? Like, we can talk about anything.

Art, the stuff we like, the things we’re doing and want to do.

It’s never boring or stale. He actually wants to know about me and the things I’ve been through.

Even my family. I don’t know, it’s just different.

Completely different from when I was with Jordan.

Everything we did was about him and what he wanted, but with Luca it’s about. ..us.”

Her brown eyes soften a little. “You talk to him about your family?”

“At gunpoint, practically.” My gaze flicks down to the table.

“I didn’t want to. But Mom did that thing she does and when I asked for a ride, Luca gave it to me.

He met her, even. And you know, she was on fucking fire that night.

Usually she barely looks at me when I drop by but I was late getting to her ‘cause I didn’t see her texts.

So she was fucking ripshit by the time we got there anyway, and then she chucked her beer at my head.

Probably would’ve nailed me if Luca hadn’t yanked me out of the way. ”

“Jesus.” This from Jamil, uttered with feeling.

I look at Danika. “He’s a good person,” I say. “I know I’m not the best judge of character on a good day—I mean, I know you know that. But he genuinely is a good person. I think he wants the best for me.”

“I believe you, Noel,” she says. “And for what it’s worth, I am happy for you.”

“I know.”

“Now we’re in agreement on that,” Jamil interjects, proffering his phone, “who wants to scroll Jordan’s sad sack feed?”

And I lean forward to join them in scrolling, because at the end of the day, I just can’t resist a little bit of mess.