Free The Best Thing I Never Had by Erin Lawless

it.
    ‘Ciggie?’ She offered one to Adam with a deft flick of her fingers. He declined by holding up his hand. Sukie regarded him in silence for a minute. ‘Something stronger?’ She pulled a suspiciously fat roll-up from the depths of her bag. Adam laughed, both at Sukie and at his immediate reaction to say yes. He was always reckless, but he was a little more reckless than usual lately.
    ‘Go on then.’
    Sukie put the spliff between her lips as she held her lighter underneath it before inhaling. She sat down on the damp wall, wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm, blowing out a thick, pale rope of smoke towards the sky. Adam sat down next to her and plucked the roll-up from Sukie’s fingers, inhaling from it with an embarrassing hiccup, his throat closing up against the unexpected sear of the smoke. They sat in silence for a few minutes, passing it back and forth. On his third drag, the back of Adam’s neck started to feel agreeably fizzy. On her fourth, Sukie exhaled with a long, satisfied sound, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
    ‘So, what’s the plan, Mr Chadwick?’ she asked him leisurely, passing the spliff.
    ‘The plan?’ Adam asked, confused. ‘Finish this and go home?’
    ‘No, not the plan for tonight,’ Sukie explained, slowly, as if he were simple. ‘Your plan for
life
.’
    ‘Bugger me, bit deep?’ Adam laughed. ‘Hopefully scrape a degree? Then move back in with the folks? Take the first decently paid job that comes my way and try and get whatever fun I can out of life.’
    ‘Nobody gets out of it alive,’ Sukie agreed sagely, waving her arm to encompass the field of mouldering bones behind them. ‘I’d like to fall in love,’ she informed him, matter-of-factly. ‘That’s all. You ever been in love?’ Adam screwed up his face. ‘Apparently it’s wonderful. Apparently it makes you feel high.’ She laughed, taking another deep drag. ‘All the time. That would be nice.’ She passed the roll-up again. ‘So, do you think Johnny really is in love with Leigha?’
    ‘Who knows?’ Adam replied, with a shrug, his words starting to slur and blend a bit. ‘I know he’s totally mad for her, can’t go a day without seeing her.’ The fizzing on the back of his neck turned into a prickle. Who was he even talking about? ‘Does that sound like love to you?’ Suddenly shaky, he took his deepest drag so far, pulling the heat deep down into his lungs.
    ‘Fucked if we know, right?’ Sukie answered, a little sullenly.
    And suddenly – whether it was the booze, the weed, or the strange pressing quality of the night – Adam suddenly felt like he was going to burst open, unless he said the words that were massing on his tongue, shared this sudden epiphany with Sukie right then and there, a Pandora opening all the boxes in the world. He opened his mouth and the sentence dropped into the space between them like a stone.
    ‘But the way Johnny feels about Leigha… is the way I feel about Harry.’
    Sukie didn’t say anything, not right away. She took several shallow draws on the spliff without offering it back to him.
    ‘You sick bastard,’ she said finally, although her tone was not unkind. ‘Do me – and yourself – a favour, okay? Never repeat that. Not to Harry and certainly not to Leigha.’ She pinched off the burning end of the roll-up with practiced fingers and put the half or so that remained back into a pocket in the lining of her handbag. ‘I’ll just assume it’s the wacky talking, okay? Now come on, walk me home already.’ She stood up decisively, hoisting her bag to her shoulder – ‘it’s fucking freezing out here,’ – and a rather shell-shocked Adam complied.

Chapter Eight
    February 2007
    Sukie sat at Harriet’s desk in front of the mirror, trying in vain to get her heavy hair to curl using Nicky’s heated tongs. Harriet – already dressed in a black beaded dress – had her knees up against her chest and her foot planted on her