WICKED BOY (Preview) M/M

(CHAPTER (3): Patreon-Exclusive Story)

Eighteen years old and I should have seen it coming, should have seen it coming the first time my stomach turned when he introduced his new fling. I should've felt something was off when it was harder to smile that day, when I stared at myself in the mirror for an hour and wondered if there was anything to like about me at all — if my parents had always been right.  I should have known when I'd felt my heart sink the first night he hadn't crawled through my window.

Lucas was my only validation of worth. I had a toxic, one-sided codependency and I couldn't realize for myself the withdrawals of his friendly affection.

I didn't realize that though, I was too naive — and it all ended with pining and scrambling for my vibrating cell, bleary eyed in the dark and hair sticking in every which way — just to see if it was him.   Unhealthily, unwavering, almost every day--

and usually it wasn't.

Lucas said it was money issues, that he had to help his mom with the kids at night because his dad was showing up less and less, and sometimes just too drunk to help at all.  I asked him to let me come to, that I'd help his mom with the kids while he worked,

and miss your curfew goody good?  I couldn't have your fall from grace on my conscience.

My dad caught a business deal three states over, my senior year.  I'd packed up in less than four days, color coordinated closet in one box, odd trinkets in two others.  My dad patted my shoulder and said to buck up and be a man when I nearly cried, and Lucas snuck in my window for the first time in ages that night — wrapped his arm around my shoulders, carried the smell of the night air and fireplaces.

"Still my sidekick."

He spit in his palm and grasped my hand, and I had shuddered at the thought of it, laughed when he'd snorted aloud.

"You should really stop spitting on your sidekick,"  I shouldered into him, wiped at my eyes, "Maybe that's why I'm moving away." 

Lucas had chuckled, but it sounded sadder.  He'd wrapped his arms around me tighter.

"We're gonna save each other one day, you know that, Milo?"

—

He lied.

We'd kept in contact after I had moved. We were eighteen and the distance had never registered to us completely; not until the exams came in our senior year.

College meant tuition, and Lucas wasn't well off money-wise.  Student loans meant a measly job at a mechanic shop with minimum wage pay, and then another sorting scrap metal at the dump downtown.  He said sometimes he didn't even sleep — and I begged my mom for the money to send him.  I knew when she delivered an adamant no that Lucas would be too proud to take it anyway.

He had it rough, pulling odds and ends of jobs as his mother became pregnant with her third child, when his dad skipped town like the deadbeat he was.  I think, suddenly, he was reminded of himself as the poor, angry boy with the ratty hand me downs.

He didn't want to hear about the stupid rich people my dad brought around anymore, didn't call to cheer me up after the biweekly corporate parties.  Worse, he didn't want to talk about his life anymore, evaded questions with an edge to his tone he'd never directed at me before.

The texts became fewer, less like bonding and more like a desperate nudge to make sure that he still remembered our friendship, but I knew deep down what would happen.

I worked harder, studied more, tried to forget him and the only happy part of my old life; his stupid chuckle, the warmth of his chest when he'd pull me in an reassuring hug — the way he'd wrinkle his nose before he'd full out grin and take off running from whatever stunt he pulled with me shocked and in tow.