Page 9 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

NOEL

Predictably I’m miserable the moment Luca leaves, my mood plummeting right along with the endorphins as I listen to the sound of his truck pull away from the curb.

This lasts through the rest of the day and long into the sleepless night where I’m afraid to go to bed, afraid of how my thoughts will turn as I lie there.

I stay up the whole night trying to keep myself busy so I won’t crash out completely.

I alternate between working on assignments and commissions until my eyes are bleary, my wrist aches, and the sky lightens beyond my bedroom window.

Only then do I set my tablet pen aside and collapse into the pillow, too exhausted to even dream.

More than most people, I think, I am prone to becoming a victim of ennui.

The days I go on campus are good in that they keep me busy and distracted from the tumult of my brain, although it helps that I do enjoy what I do.

Art, that is. It has always been the most effective outlet for everything I actively suppress until I put paint to canvas or pen to tablet.

I am contents under pressure until I can leak some out this way.

It doesn’t always work and, it’s not always convenient, though.

There are times when I cannot simply throw myself down and doodle the intensity of my malformed feelings away.

Then I have other avenues, far more destructive and even less productive.

But for the most part I’m doing okay. I’ve gotten through most of my adult life on my own, in my own way.

Not all coping mechanisms are healthy coping mechanisms but I’m better than I used to be.

And as the week wears on, day by agonizing day, it sets in: my relationship is really and truly over. Jordan is gone. That I am alone in the apartment and alone with my thoughts, and I don’t like that part at all. I do not like being alone.

Luca hasn’t called yet, of course, but I thought he would’ve by now.

I mean, I thought my closing argument yesterday had been pretty damn convincing.

I rocked his fucking world. He practically tore up my cheap, low thread count sheets in his enthusiasm.

It was the first time he’s gotten good sex in however long he’s been married—no offense, Luca’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, but I guess he’s just not that into you!

—and there is more where that came from if he would just call .

Plus, the apartment is decent, and the location, too.

It might be smaller than what he’s used to, but it sure is better than the room at the Hyatt.

Although, no housekeeping. Or continental breakfasts.

He’s decent in bed, that’s for sure. There is something in him, all hungry and domineering, that can be coaxed to the surface.

With more confidence, more practice, and not even a lot of it.

Just a little nudge in the correct directions, being shown that he’s wanted by the sort of person he wants.

It’s a matter of education. I can turn him into the kind of lover that his future boyfriend will melt for.

Now it’s Wednesday. He still hasn’t called like he said he would.

And neither do I call him, nor do I text him.

I need to maintain my facade of relative normalcy for the time being, keeping a careful yet intriguing distance so I don’t scare him off with my intensity.

And it’s not like I’m obsessed with him, so that’s easy to do.

I like him, and I like what he can offer me, but that’s it.

I just think everyone wins in this arrangement.

There is only so much I can do to distract myself from thoughts of Luca, though, and I am trying to temper my expectations, not set myself up for disappointment. As I usually do. As I infamously do.

I think I fucked up after we had sex. Oh, I really think I might’ve .

But I can’t help it, that awful feeling that comes afterwards.

A sort of trapped and panicked feeling, coupled with intense regret.

Feeling that I’m dirty and disgusting and used.

And the thing is that I do want reassurance otherwise but I don’t feel I can ask for it. And no one’s really offered it, anyway.

Jordan never liked it when I touched him afterwards.

The minute he was done he was done , doing anything to get away from me.

If I so much as went in for a kiss he barked at me, so now it was just habit, cringing and shrinking away afterwards, making myself scarce and small.

He told me I was too needy, and he’d rather jerk off most of the time.

That it was easier to just get himself off than deal with me or my pleasure afterwards, it was too much work, he was tired and had things to do.

So I had to present myself as a better option than that.

You can jerk off inside me and you won’t need to worry about my pleasure or care.

I’ll be as obedient as a sex doll. I’ll do all the work without any of the upkeep.

That’s one big dead horse that doesn’t merit any more mutilation, though.

I do really like Luca. As much as I can like a guy I barely know.

He’s sexy and interesting and seems to give a shit about things, which is more than I can say for most guys in my acquaintance.

Probably helps that he is older. He’s more level-headed, evened out, a whole person.

Complete and all clearly defined, with no unfinished parts that still need filling out.

Which is I guess how I feel. Some abstract, unfinished piece with a giant hole punched through the center of the canvas.

I finish my assignment and then I have nothing else.

The satisfaction of finishing the piece is quickly hounded by the dissatisfaction that it’s not good enough, that I could’ve done far better, and now that I’m standing back and looking at it, there are a million and a half things I would’ve-could’ve-should’ve changed.

I have to go to my room and stop looking at it before I do something stupid and irreversible.

There’s a backlog of commissions I need to start on, but I can’t bring myself to touch them tonight.

Inadequacy, imposter syndrome, I don’t know what it is—no matter what success I have, proven or otherwise, it’s not good enough.

It’s never good enough. I am not good enough.

This always fucking happens, every time I finish something.

I am wanting. Always. Trying to seek something that fills this strange emptiness that’s always existed as long as I’ve existed.

A hole put in me either at birth or so early on that I can’t remember it.

Some great black void where good feelings go to die.

My therapist says it’s because I was neglected as a kid, but I can’t remember a time I was never not like this and so I prefer to think I was simply born broken and it wasn’t necessarily my mom’s fault, or because my dad never materialized.

That there was and is no real helping it.

I was born without some essential part of me that’s supposed to make me, me.

I just play at being me. Whatever that means.

Broken or not, life goes on. World keeps spinning, somehow, even though I’m actively dying. I’m alive but I’m dying. There are nails in my lungs and broken glass coating my insides, and that hole is gaping-sucking-consuming.

I press my face into my pillow. It smells of Luca, faintly, as I rub my cheek against it; something herbal and musky, sweat and sex. It makes me feel lonelier than ever. Another thing I should do and don’t: change my sheets. Why bother? Why anything?

And I can’t go out because I have nowhere to go, really, and no desire to even go.

I have no reason to go anywhere. For some reason the idea of getting picked up at Anathema repulses me and I’m not gonna run down to Providence where the actual sucking and fucking happens.

I can’t afford to waste the money on getting down there and in there and then back here.

Even though that’s what I want, right now, or think I do.

I roll over and reach for my phone, grabbing it off the nightstand.

I scroll through my contacts until I find Jordan’s name.

My thumb hovers over his name and I know that I shouldn’t do this, that I should leave him alone, that I should pray he’s blocked me—and if he’s smart, he has—but I do it. I message him.

what are you up to?

And then, when I see my message has gone through:

do you still need your stuff?

The delivery notifications don’t turn to read. I wait thirty seconds, a minute, two minutes. My hunger grows and so does the ever expanding-or-contracting cavity in my core, the need for attention, even a crumb of it, even from him.

miss you

wish you were here right now

you know I’m sorry right? about everything. especially breaking your headphones, i didn’t mean to do that. i still think you should let me buy you a replacement

and I know it was all my fault, you didn’t do anything wrong. i was a shitty boyfriend to you

do you think we could still be friends at least?

i wish you’d give me a second chance

It would be more like a third, or fourth, or tenth chance, because I was badly behaved.

I know that I was. I know that I am not the easiest person to love.

But I find it impossible that my ex could have simply stopped loving me so fast. The last year has been a roller coaster, but it seems unfair to throw it all away because I had an especially bad night, one provoked by yet another instance of my mother threatening to off herself if I didn’t give her money.

Some of which would invariably be used on pills.

I stare at my phone. Waiting and trying to curb the panic rising inside me, clawing up my throat like a living thing and threatening to spill out of me. My arms itch. I pull at my collar. I’m trying to resist, I am.