Worth the Trouble ✓

09 | dirty little secret

COME THE FIRST DAY OF sophomore year, I feel different but everything looks the same.

I didn't know how much I grew over the summer until Dad forced me to try on my button-up shirt on Saturday—too tight around the armpits. He bought me a whole new uniform and sent Mom the bill.

Suki's parents dropped her off today while I took the chartered bus. The main building of Carsonville Academy looms on the lush green lawn, all bricked stone and Palladian windows. When I walk past the imposing cenotaph on the pathway, the rest of the bus-riders filing from the road onto the grass, it hits me how lucky I am.

Not because I knocked up my teenage girlfriend and only discovered it a third of the way through the pregnancy. From most angles, I am incredibly unlucky. Or reckless. Maybe I brought this on myself by having sex, like biting the Apple of Eden.

But from another precise angle—the angle when my head and my heart and my reality are in syzygy—I'm lucky because I still have Suki. I know she worries about a litany of things larger than she lets on. When I try to talk about how she's feeling, a rehearsed type of answer comes out.

And every so often I'll see that infomercial for pregnancy vitamin supplement tablets on TV. Hey, have you thought about this? I want to text Suki, except I catch myself. Of course, she's thought of this. She thinks of everything. I just can't imagine feeling what she feels, something so encompassing that suddenly her own dreams pale in importance.

It must be some revolutionary type of emotion.

For a moment, I thought we would break up. I thought Suki would be overpowered with that incomprehensible love for the thing inside her. She'd end things with me when she realised my failings, when she realised I couldn't step up to the plate. I mean, that's what you do when deadbeat boyfriends can't own their responsibilities, right?

But I'm lucky. I'm still with the girl I love. The girl I love is smart, and more understanding than I ever thought possible. Good boyfriends don't always make good fathers. I'm really grateful she knows that. Because if I tried to be the latter, I can easily imagine myself ceasing to be the former.

So the whole debacle has made me freshly dedicated to Suki. If she ever left me, she'd take the wind, the leaves, the colours and the sounds from my world. My life would be monotone and silent and cold. While she'll have me, I'm going to be the best boyfriend I can to her.

So imagine my joy when I leave homeroom class and waltz into Math, immediately spotting her silky black hair and slender frame.

"Well, well, well." I smile cheekily at Suki when I take the seat next to her. Finally, a class together. "This year might be better than I thought."

Suki jolts at my familiar face, whirling around with shining eyes. She arches her brow and quivers her oh-so kissable lips. "Don't think this means I'm letting you copy my homework."

"I'm more than capable of failing on my own. I'm just happy I get one class with my gi—"

"Terrence," she hushes sweetly. The tip of her pencil eraser presses into the corner of her mouth, deepening the smile already forming. "Not here."

"Pfft. No-one's even looking."

"They're listening," Suki replies. Then she winks at me.

It's only on special occasions that she winks, because Suki is not a naturally flirtatious person. Believe me, she's sexy as hell when she wants to be—but more in a sly, scheming, give me what I want or I'll tease it out of you kind of way.

That wink feels so special and secretive that I fall silent immediately, resolutely stealing glances at her throughout the lesson.