Page 54 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

NOEL

Waiting around for Luca to get home is torture because I have news for him, good news, which I guess is really for me but since we’re a couple now it’s for both of us.

Because I have gotten a job offer—already!

—in my field, two year contractual work that’ll start right after graduation on a series of anatomy textbooks. I’m fucking vibrating out of my skin.

I’ve been scouted for a job straight out of school.

The fucking dream. All that money spent and tireless networking hasn’t been for nothing.

All those portfolio days. Or maybe they have been, technically, because it was my one illustration professor who put my future boss onto me, but whatever.

I’m going to have a fucking job, a good one, and it’s going to look fantastic on my resume for the future.

And the timing is so perfect. Because he’ll be almost-divorced in May, when I graduate and start this new job.

A month after that he’ll be officially divorced.

And my lease will be up, and we can find somewhere else to go that isn’t plagued by undergrads—maybe Roxbury or JP, a little more affordable and still close to his work; I’ll be remote so it won’t matter at all where we go.

We can get a bigger place, too. A second bedroom that can be used as a studio for us both.

Sure, I’ve still got some loans to pay back, but I’ll still be doing commissions in the meantime.

And I’ll be getting paid good money from my real job, too.

I should have more money left over for my mother.

Maybe she’ll let me help her in a way that’s meaningful.

Maybe I can figure out how to get through to her, somehow, ease her into the idea of rehab, even if it’s a long shot.

Either way, it’s going to be a fresh start for me and Luca both. A new, shiny life together. It really is finally coming together for me. For us.

So when the front door opens and I hear the jangle of Amelia’s tags it takes everything in me not to launch myself at Luca.

I have to walk, very calmly, from the bedroom to the living room.

But I know my face is practically bifurcated by my giant grin and my voice is several octaves higher than normal when I say, “Hey there,” and I’m trying to catch sight of his face while he takes off the dog’s coat.

She comes over to me with tail wagging and wet nose snuffling.

I rub her face while I wait for him to finish hanging up her leash and his coat before he sweeps me into his arms like he always does.

He doesn’t, though.

In fact he seems to take an inordinate amount of time to do these things, and I can’t catch his eye because he keeps sort of turning away from me, and when he finally does face me, his gaze is averted and his hair’s covering his face and he doesn’t reach for me, he doesn’t say anything.

He stands there, arms at his side dangling uselessly.

I am immediately uneasy, disquieted. “Is something wrong?” I say. “Did Demi?—”

“She’s pregnant,” he says, abruptly.

The impact of his words don’t immediately register, the weight and their meaning. I say, “Okay. Good for her, I guess. What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s mine. The baby’s mine.”

And now it does hit, like a fucking sledgehammer.

I recoil physically, taking a step back from him.

“What do you mean it’s yours? I thought you weren’t—you said you weren’t having sex with her.

You said you had dead bedroom or whatever.

” And they couldn’t have while he was living with me. He wouldn’t have.

Luca lifts his head to meet my gaze at last. His face is so impassive.

There is so little emotion to glean from his expression, though I try to seek some, desperately.

Try to figure out what he’s saying to me that he isn’t actually, but I can’t read him like that.

Not the way he can me. “We tried in January,” he tells me. “Before we separated.”

“And she got pregnant from that?” I say. “Are you sure?”

“She says she hasn’t been with anyone else since then. That was the last time she had sex.”

“You believe her?”

“Of course I believe her. She’s the one who wants to divorce me, why would she suddenly fabricate something like that? ”

I rake my hair back from my face. Don’t freak the fuck out.

Okay, whatever. I knew he wanted kids, he’d told me as much, had spoken of it so goddamn wistfully that it made me feel sad for him, made me kind of disappointed that I didn’t magically possess a fucking womb with which to provide him any, even though I’d never thought about it before, ever, in my life.

So I should be happy, then. He’s gonna get to have his kid.

I hate that it means he will be tied to Demi forever this way, but it’s not the end of the world.

Of course I don’t like the way he said that— she wants to divorce me, like he’d be happy to stay married to her forever despite me being right here giving him all the love in the world—but I’m gonna pick and choose my battles tonight.

“Okay,” I say at last. “You’re going to have a baby.

Congratulations.” I try to smile. “Are you happy about it?”

“I don’t know,” Luca says. “I mean, I am, but?—”

“Well, I have good news, too,” I say. “My professor put me in touch with a company that publishes textbooks, biology and anatomy and that sort of thing. I’ve been talking to them over the last week, having them look at my portfolio.

Didn’t think anything would come out of it, but they offered me a job today.

So when I graduate and my lease is up, we can get a bigger place.

You know, that’ll have room for the baby and all.

So that won’t be a problem. If you’re worried.

” He’s not saying anything. He doesn’t look happy for me at all.

“Near Demi, even,” I add sort of desperately.

“And I’ll take on more commissions, too. I’ll have two sources of income.”

Luca’s looking off to the side again, his hands sliding into the pockets of his jeans. “That’s great,” he says to the couch. “Really good news. I’m so happy for you.” He could’ve been recounting the weather for all the enthusiasm he was showing me.

I look down. Amelia’s sitting at my feet, and sensing my gaze, she wags her tail. I pet her ears, slowly. “Um,” I say. “Yeah. Thanks.”

There’s another awkward silence, and this one is so unbearably long that I can feel my brain melting in real time.

I am trying so, so hard to behave when all I want to do is scream and shake him.

Ask him how he could’ve let this happen.

How he could be having a fucking baby, now, with his future fucking ex-wife. Why? Why now? Why her?

And why the fuck is he being like this? Why won’t he touch me? Look at me? Where’s my hello kiss or even a hug? Does he think this is a deal-breaker? Because it’s not. It’s not ideal, no, the love of my life having a baby with someone else, but I’m still in this. I still want him.

“We can make it work,” I say at last, since he doesn’t seem interested in continuing the conversation and I cannot bear to let it die on this note. “We’ll figure it out, Luca, no problem. I’ll be making pretty decent money, loans aside. So don’t worry about that.”

He looks up at me again. “Noel, I—maybe you should sit down.”

Oh, no. I know that tone and I know that phrase, I know it is a prelude for something that is bad. I stay right where I am though I feel sick, suddenly, and there is a cold sweat breaking out on the back of my neck. My hands ball into fists. “Why are you being so weird? ”

“Sit down so we can talk.”

“Just say it,” I say. “Whatever it is that you’re going to say.”

He tries to wait me out, but when I stay standing I hear him sigh. He touches his forehead and then tucks his hair behind his ears. “Listen. This really fucking sucks and I don’t want to hurt you. I love you so damn much, okay? I need you to know that, above anything else, how much I love you.”

I know what he’s going to fucking say. I know it—in my bones, in my soul, in my entire being, instinct and intuition and gut and whatever else in me that can divine these things with complete and total accuracy.

I fucking know. I cover my mouth with my hands and try to stifle the awful keening sound that tries to escape. There are already tears in my eyes.

“I could’ve been happy with you forever,” he’s going on, babbling basically, bullshit that is pointless and means absolutely nothing.

Might as well be reciting the ABCs for all the meaning these words have.

“Just me and you. I wish that it was still just me and you so that could be true, but it’s not. ”

“You’re leaving me,” I whisper into my palms. “You’re going back to her.”

“Not exactly.” He steps closer to me, beseeching, hands held out with palms up and asking for some sort of benediction from me.

“It’s just that I want to be there for my baby.

So I...I’ll be moving back in with Demi, just as friends.

So she won’t have to do all this by herself.

And so I can spend time as much time with my kid as possible when they’re born.

It won’t be forever or anything. We can still be together. ”

I rip my hands away from my face. “What the fuck are you suggesting?” I demand. “That I get into some weird semi-platonic throuple with you and your wife? Moving me in with her? Are you actually saying that to me right now?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. We can still see each other, just...separately. You’d be living here or wherever you decide to go after graduation, and I’ll be back in Revere. It won’t be exactly the same as before, but it’ll be temporary, anyway. Until after the baby’s older.”