Page 52 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

LUCA

It is twilight by the time I get over to Revere the next evening. I bring Amelia so she can see Demi, since those visits will be getting farther and fewer in between. It makes me a little sad to think about, how it’s all going to just...stop.

It makes me sad, too, that I can’t call this house mine anymore.

I haven’t been really, in my head. I’ve long reduced it to “the little house in Revere.” Because I knew it was gone the moment I took my stuff and left, since it wasn’t what I’d ever wanted in the first place.

It was always Demi’s house. It will continue to be Demi’s house.

That’s how I should start thinking of it: Demi’s house.

And I think about how, as we walk up the path to the front door, my father will take the news tomorrow when we have our monthly lunch.

He mustn’t know yet; the inter-family gossip has yet to reach his ears, which is a little impressive.

Ominous, actually. There is part of me that wishes Demi’s family had already told him and thus relieve me of the responsibility, but it’s better this way, making me face it myself.

To be able to tell him to his face that I am gay, it wasn’t a phase, and no, he can’t beat this boyfriend up.

If he touched so much as a hair on Noel’s head, I don’t know what I’d do.

The thought of him doing to Noel what he did to Arin makes me absolutely sick.

And thinking about what happened to Arin makes me sick enough.

There is, still, that guilt, and I guess I’ll keep on having to carry it—but maybe I can find some redemption in Noel.

I am going to do better by him. I’ve made myself this promise.

It’s all better this way, how things are all shaking out.

But endings are still sad.

I could let myself in, but I ring the doorbell out of courtesy.

When Demi answers the door, she looks as rough as I’ve ever seen her; her face is puffy and eyes bloodshot, as if she’s been crying.

She manages a smile for Amelia, who snuffles and licks her with her tail whipping frantically, and steps aside to let us in.

“You alright?” I ask her. “You don’t look so hot.”

“Fine.” The word comes out hoarse.

I set the folder on the counter and then turn to study her.

She’s busying herself with Amelia, her long hair curtaining her face so I can’t see it.

She’s wearing pajamas and I can’t tell if she did go to work today.

“Do you need anything?” I say. “Pepto-Bismol or something? I could do a CVS run for you.”

“No. It’s not—” She stops, sighs and straightens. “Let’s sit down. We have to talk.”

I follow her into the living room. Not much has changed here.

It’s all aching in its poignant familiarity.

I had assumed she would get rid of the ugly plaid couches she never liked.

We thrifted them back when we first bought the house, when we were much more poor, and then I’d argued in favor of keeping them when we could afford replacing them.

They had character . I didn’t want one of those sad minimalist beige houses like all the people she followed on social media seemed to have, and she acquiesced.

Demi sits on one couch and I sit on the other, and Amelia jumps up to curl up beside me. Her head goes across my knee. “What’s up?” I say. “More shit for me to sign?”

“I’m pregnant,” she says.

There is a beat of silence, and it is fucking loaded. I put a hand atop the dog’s head. “Oh,” I say. “Uh. Opa ?”

“Seriously? Is that all you have to say about the announcement of your child’s imminent existence?”

“My—?” My breath catches in my throat and I stare at her, open-mouthed. “What do you mean, my child? When? How?”

“We had sex in January,” she reminds me.

“But...” I stare at her. My head is sort of pulsing, my stomach’s bottoming out.

I’m standing on a cliff. I’m at the precipice of a chasm.

I’m staring into infinity. What the actual fuck?

“Did I even—” Finish, is what I’m about to say, perhaps callously, because I can’t even remember.

Only that it was bad sex. Sex so bad that immediately after she asked me if I even liked women.

“ Luca. ” She’s lost her patience, made all the more thin by how terrible she’s feeling, and my name is little more than a hiss. “Don’t be like this. It’s yours.”

I am still trying to process this but it’s awfully hard when the floor has suddenly vanished beneath my feet.

When I am sitting on a couch that’s floating out to space, or bobbling on the sea, or being sucked into a vacuum.

I couldn’t have been more shocked if she had reached into my chest and torn my heart clean out and then thrown it into the garbage disposal. And then turned it on, while I watched.

When I do finally speak, I sound strange and distant to my own ears. Very mechanically I pet the dog. “How long have you known?”

“Since this morning.” She gets up and disappears into the hallway bathroom, then returns with a little plastic stick that she tosses it into my hands.

It’s one of those tests that tell you, in so many words, Pregnant or Not Pregnant .

The window very clearly says Pregnant . Zero room for interpretation there.

“I’ve felt like complete shit for the last month, but it’s really ramped up the last week.

And then I realized I haven’t seen my period in a while. ”

I lean forward and set the test very carefully on the coffee table. “How long is a while?”

“Since Christmas.”

Jesus fucking Christ. “And when did you stop taking the pill?”

“Around the same time,” she says, irritated. “Because we were going to try for a baby this year.”

“Right. Yeah.” I stare at the test and it stares back. Pregnant . “So you just didn’t have a period for like, three months and didn’t think anything about it?”

“Between you, the divorce, and work? No, Luca. My period was not at the forefront of my mind. And I’d just come off the pill, so it’s not like I expected to be either immediately regular or fertile.”

“Okay.” I sweep my hair out of my face. “I...okay. Sorry. I’m not blaming you or anything. I’m just trying to make sense of it, that’s all.”

“There’s nothing to make sense of. You knocked me up.”

What a terribly inconvenient way to find out.

What terrible goddamn timing indeed. I’m still staring at the test and stroking Amelia’s head, like something’s going to change or start making sense if I look long enough.

If I could take some ownership of this, somehow, feel like I am responsible.

And of course I am. I believe Demi when she says she hasn’t been with anyone else.

She gets fuck all out of lying to me about this.

If anything, it would benefit her more to be pregnant by someone else—some handsome colleague who makes as much money as she does, for instance.

Not the gay tattoo artist she was in the process of divorcing.

And I suppose I expect to feel some sort of dismay. Upset that there is going to be a baby in the middle of our divorce. How it will complicate so many things and ruin so many others just by virtue of existing. I don’t, though. I don’t feel dismayed at all.

A baby. My baby. That future I thought I’d never get to have, my big fat Greek family. Well, not so big anymore— we’ve dwindled down to nothing over the years, but still. I could be a dad. Not could—would. Am. I am going to be a father.

“I’m not getting rid of it,” Demi’s saying. “I hope that’s not what you’re about to suggest. I’m completely prepared to do this alone. I’ve got the means and my family and everything. You—you don’t have to be in the picture at all.”

I jerk my head up in surprise. “What? No! Of course I wasn’t going to say that.” Not in the picture at all? “Why on earth are you saying this shit?”

“Because I know you’ve got a new life set up.” She’s brisk, clipped, matter-of-fact. She looks more like herself now that the news is out; self-assured and chin held high. This is more like the Demi I know. “I’m not trying to ruin all that for you. I’m not asking for anything.”

“Demi.” I get up, dislodging Amelia’s head in the process, and go to sit next to her on the couch. “That’s insane. There’s no way I’m just turning my back on you and a baby just because we didn’t work out. You really expect me to walk away and forget this is happening?”

She turns her head to look at me, her abundant dark hair spilling over her shoulders. She is putting on a brave face, but I can see her dark brown eyes are glittering with tears she refuses to let fall. “I don’t know,” she admits quietly. “You’re different now. Everything’s different.”

I reach for her hand and she lets me take it. “I’m not,” I say. “Not like that.”

“I just thought...” She trails off. Her eyelids flicker as she glances down, briefly, at our clasped hands.

“You know what the worst part is? It’s that I wanted this baby so much, and I wanted it with you.

Because I know what an amazing goddamn dad you’d be.

We’d have such an incredible little family together, you and me and whoever this kid turns out to be. ”

Noel said that, too. That I would be a good dad.

“But now it’s gonna be...I don’t know.

I don’t know what the future looks like.

” She raises her head to meet my gaze again.

“Now I’m going to be a single mom, which fucking sucks .

And you’ll be there with...whatever custody arrangement we have.

You’ll have to find a place with enough room for a baby.

” Loaded statement. Read: not a cramped apartment with a twenty-something boyfriend.

“And I don’t want to keep them from having a dad.

I want them to have a whole family. As whole as it can be. ”

“I want that, too,” I say.