Page 27 of Lucky Sucker

Deep in my mind, there was probably a word for what he was saying, but it was far from reaching distance. “Thank you.” It was all I could summon.

“I feel like I’m the reason you’re sad,” he said. “You want me to walk you home? Or you can stay in my room? What do you want to do?”

I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My limbs were heavy right now, I’d emotionally purged all over Luke’s shirt. I couldn’t imagine he wanted to waste any more time with me when he had a party to get back to.

12. LUKE

It was clearly a night for emotions. I didn’t know myself well enough at all. I couldn’t juggle all these emotions in the hopes it wasn’t going to affect me.

Wren was a ball of worry although he gave me an insight into who he was, which made me want to protect him even more than I already did.

“I think I’ll go home,” he whispered to me after we stayed out on the sofas, watching the flames in the fire pit begin to die out.

“I’m walking you,” I told him.

“You have a party to be at, you’re the team captain, it’s important for you to be seen,” he said.

He made a point, but I didn’t want to be with them. I wanted to be with him, even if it just meant walking him into town and walking back alone. I could do with the walk to help organize my thoughts into some sort of order. I knew I was in a position of responsibility and representation, and I really didn’t know if I could be a representation for the rainbow community as Julia had put it.

“I’m walking you home,” I said. “And also I want to know where you live so I can check in on you.”

“Check in on me?” he asked, wiping his face with the edge of his sleeve. “I’m sure you don’t need to do that.”

“It’s just something I want to do for y own peace of mind,” I told him. “And maybe I’d want to a tour.”

Wren shook his head and then nodded. “It’s a shared townhouse. They might be there.”

“They?”

“The people I live with. I don’t really speak to them, but they seem nice. I just—”

More and more clues to who Wren was. He was a hermit at heart, and here I was pulling him from his shell and forcing him to be front facing as the entire team and their friends met him. The renewed sense of awfulness filled my stomach once more. “Let’s grab you some cake and let’s go,” I said. “I’m not gonna have you missing out.” I’d tried the frosting earlier when Julia was out of the kitchen. It was to die for, and she would’ve probably smacked my hand with a spatula if she’d seen me go in the bowl with a spoon.

Usually at team events like these, especially those held at the house, I would be on my best behavior to speak to as many people as possible, encourage people to come to the games and even try and get them to make signs for me. Number ten. Tonight was very different, while I should’ve been hosting as captain, I was off, sneaking out through the front door with Wren’s arm hooked into mine.

Nobody noticed, and if they had, they didn’t say anything about it.

It felt oddly mischievous, sneaking out of the house.

We walked from the small sports village of houses together, arm in arm. One of my favorite things about Maplehaven was how walkable it was. It was probably to keep all the students from each having a car and congesting the streets.

“You can’t judge my room when you see it,” he said.

“I’d never judge,” I told him. “I just want to see it, so I know what I’m dealing with.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I mean, it’ll look weird if we don’t have sleepovers and stuff,” I said. “You know, just spit balling some ideas because I don’t want this to look like a stunt. And people know PR stunts, so we’ve got to make sure it looks real, because I guess maybe it feels real.” Once the words came out, there was no stopping them, I was admitting things to him, and I didn’t even know if he was registering the fact.

“My bed is not as big as yours, so you’d have to sleep on the floor if there was a sleepover at mine,” he said. “And at yours, we can top and tail, you know, you at one end, me at the other.”

“Top and tail,” I repeated with a big smirk. It had been a while since I’d heard that term. “Yeah. I guess we don’t really have to think much about that for a while though, do we?”

“You mentioned it first.”

I didn’t know what my mind was trying to do, but apparently, it was trying to get me and Wren in the same bed. “Tomorrow we’ve got training, and if you’re free, I’d love you to come and distract everyone.”

“Distract them?”

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