"Old times?" I splutter.
Lucas is still grinning, wide and careless, but my reading glasses are smattered with water — eyelashes desperately trying to bat away the water from the sprinklers above. I blink through blurry vision. For a moment, it feels like tears.
"This is — ?" Old times.
I find myself being shouldered by the different bodies that are hurrying past me, the voices of angry older gentlemen and high pitched shrieks from women ringing in my ears. I can hear my heart thumping, wild and unsteady, just past that.
Lucas slides through them with an ease that feeds my nostalgia, approaches me with his hands propped inside his pockets — like, like this moment isn't everything to me.
"Yeah. Old times," The dark-haired man repeats. He has my discarded book peeking halfway out the side of his suit jacket. His gaze chases mine to it, then lifts again, "What? Did I crash your little jamboree?"
"You're an adult — we're adults now," I hiss. I can't think of anything else to say. I can feel the water soaking through the white button-up under my sweater vest, "what are you even thinking?"
"Does it matter," He smiles. It's a mean sort — one that doesn't reach his eyes. "To you? ...What I'm thinking? How things turned out for me?"
"What are you even —? We're not teens anymore. You could get in serious trouble — you could be fined."
"Woah! Way to watch out for poor little me." Lucas throws back his head, bares his throat as he laughs loudly — loud enough to cut through the ruckus around us, to edge the skin on the back of my neck into goosebumps, "Damn. You haven't changed at all." He says, as his eyes travel back to mine, eyebrows working downwards as he studies my distressed features, "have you?"
He repeats this fact, but this time it's colder — almost inaudible. Once, I would've confused it with something different — but now, I can sense a quiet contemplation.
"I guess you haven't either."
He's crueler — but I can see the familiar shades of green in his eyes sparkling through the yellow lighting of the building, see his smirk fall into something less genuine, a more delicate sort of smile that doesn't seem so sharp — so cutting.
"Yeah. 'Cause you let your dad fuck my life up. And now — here we are." He slides his hands from his pockets, head tilting. "And I guess — I'm not surprised to see that you turned into everything he wanted you to be. That you have it all. Just like you were born to."
Something angry and hot curdles inside my chest.
Because he's wrong — because he's seven different shades of wrong and he was my friend —
"No, you don't get to do that. You don't — don't blame me for whatever — you're in a suit at McLaughlin Event. Please tell me how your life is fucked — "
"Oh, is a suit all it takes not to be fucked up?" Lucas is too close now — barks this out, and I recoil from the genuine anger in his tone. "Didn't your daddy wear a fuckin' suit?"
I recoil. If I thought I felt heartbreak — all those years ago. It was nothing compared to this.
"Why are you so hell-bent on hurting me?" I say it, and though the start is quiet — Lucas somehow still knows the words I've spoken, watches my lips as I speak in the ruckus around us, "What did I do to you?"
His stance stiffens, snide small falling.
"Milan!"
My attention shifts immediately, startled out of my reservoir. It seems to do the same for Lucas. I jump a little, turn back in time to see Isaac shoving aside the crowd that's pushing past, his expression twisted into mild irritation,
YOU ARE READING
WICKED BOY (Preview) M/M
RomanceI met Lucas when I was eight. He was taller than me, tougher, and with a light in his eyes that said he could do anything - be anything that he wanted to be. I'd instantly taken a liking to him, even when he pulled my shirt over my head and pushed...
