The Men Next Door

Ch 36 - Luca

"Do you think I should get back on my meds?" I asked Addy over breakfast on a miserably muggy morning in August.

Her air conditioner had stopped working sometime in the middle of the night, and the open windows weren't doing shit to cool the apartment down, so I wasn't sure if she salted the eggs or the flavor was coming from my dripping brow sweat. Why I decided that was a good time to have a conversation about stimulants instead of leading us back to my dehumidified, 70-degree apartment was beyond me, but... so are most things I decide to do.

"I don't know," she said, peering at me curiously over the rim of her glass. "Why'd you stop in the first place?"

Oh, shit. That's right.

I warned her I was quitting back in December so she wouldn't take my assholery personally, but that's where I left it. She was in Connecticut through the worst of the withdrawal symptoms, we were still hooking up mostly-under-the-radar, and I didn't want to fuck myself over with the truth. I mean, my biggest motivator, apart from me and Brooks' conversation about Carlo, was that I basically called her best friend a whore. And I was no expert on relationships, but that didn't seem like a very enticing piece of information to share.

"You gave me some vague reason about irritability," she continued. "But you were tiptoeing around it, and we'd only been hanging out for a couple weeks, so I didn't push you on it."

"Yeah," I sighed, shoving my hair up off of my forehead as it clung to the fresh beads of moisture there. Cooking inside the already-preheated oven of an apartment was a terrible idea, but so was letting Addy get hangry. Some sacrifices had to be made. "Adderall makes people irritable. It's a thing. And the longer I was on it, the more I noticed it happening."

Her nose crinkled in confusion. "So why do you want to go back on it?"

"I don't. Not really. But I also don't want to lose my job. I've been chewing caffeine gum like I'm trying to kick a fucking nicotine habit, but instead, I'm just trying to stay focused long enough to answer some emails."

"Okay, so... go back on it," Addy concluded, like it was the simplest thing in the world. She lifted her fork to her mouth, then hovered a hand in front of her lips while she finished her thought. "Or try a different medicine. There has to be other types, right?"

"Yeah, but they all have side effect sheets longer than your birth control. So basically, my options are either be irritable and anxious because of a pill —" I held up one finger, then another "— or be irritable and anxious because I can't get anything done. It's some real 'grass is always greener' shit."

Addy tilted her head curiously. "Where's this coming from?" Her left hand reached between our barstools to settle on my thigh, and the tiny bit of extra heat had me yanking my sweat-soaked shirt over my head. "You've been off of it for eight months already. What changed?"

My head shook noncommittally as I raised my glass to my lips. The gulp of water I sucked down a second later did absolutely nothing to cool me off, and I couldn't comprehend how Addy was still sitting there fully clothed. I would've been melting if I was her.

And not because of the glistening, shirtless man one seat over.

"Is this about my parents?" she probed. "Because they're being idiots about that, Luca. They mean well, but they're being idiots."

I knew that as well as Addy did, but I bit my tongue. Only she was allowed to say anything remotely insulting about her folks. I'd learned that the hard way after mommy and daddy Torres called me "just as volatile as Walker'' for defending their daughter with my fists. And while I was frustrated that they were still set on me being Satan after so much time had passed, this wasn't about them.