Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Lucy i swear 2 god you better hold your ground. just cause he’s struggling doesn’t mean he gets to demand comfort out of you!!

It hurts to see *Lucy* like this?? Boy she is doing way better in comparison

Yeah Michael. Like WHAT. She’s doing amazingly. And growing as a person.

God, Mike. Go home. You’re in no state to talk to Lucy

And Lucy, don’t let him just reel you back in.

Being cheated on sucks, but he still needs to apologize to her

I think Lucky being able to feel empathy for Mike is better than her completely shutting off and keeping her emotions tamped down in front of all of her friends. I just hope that she doesn’t get reeled back in by this

Oof, I reeeeeally doubt that mentioning Sandy and the fact that the relationship ended to Lucy right now is going to end well. Lucy clearly feels some sympathy for him right now, but the minute she connects the dots between “Mike now is being nice to be and wants me to be part of his life” and “Mike no longer has his GF”…..YIKES!!!

Also, while I get Mike might possibly be trying to convey more “it hurts me that you are so distant from me”, I can’t help but side more with Lucy right now. She’s been happier the last few months she’s been back than she was for AGES before she left. She clearly is still going through things and has some old bad habit to kick, but she has, IMO, doing a lot better and seems much more stable. She’s just not in Mike’s life anymore and doesn’t seem to want to be. :/ That’s hardly sad to see.

Agreed. Mike looks like he finally realizes how much impact Lucy had in his life and mourns the loss of that, but he’s still only looking at it from his own perspective. “Please stop hating *me.*” “*I* can’t cope with it anymore.”

He’s still focused entirely on how *he* was affected by Lucy leaving and doesn’t seem to be giving much thought on how much of a hand he had in it. He’s not thinking about how he made *Lucy* feel, only how her absence affects him. If he really wants to save their friendship, he needs to focus on fixing the issues with himself before he drags Lucy into it. He shouldn’t even approach her until he’s ready to talk about what he did to *her.*

In other words, Lucy has no reason to hear him out because he’s still framing it like it’s still all about him and Sandy, which going by Mike’s thoughts this chapter, it really is. He wants Lucy back in his life for how she lifts him up, disregarding that he really doesn’t have anything to offer her anymore.

Absolutely not. You don’t get to guilt her into a friendship. YOU decided you didn’t want her around, YOU made her beleive all her friends would abandon her, YOU didn’t care if she dropped off the earth and once again now that sandy is gone, you’ve come crawling back to pretend you give a crap. She might not have been the nicest to mike but at least she was consistently there for him. Nope nope nope.

He thinks that because he just got dumped, he deserves sympathy, from LUCY no less?? Didn’t he crawl into her window in the night for comfort over Sandy before too? He is ridiculous and I WISH PAULO or anyone for that matter would roll up right now and interfere?? #savelucy

Mike has been aggressive but he’s also been a very nice and genuinely compassionate soul. It’s good to be holding him to the mistakes he’s made, but it seems like he’s going to make amends, this is the first time he’s tried to break down. He doesn’t have much to be aggressive about anymore so the damage may stop. Sandy had been hurting him a lot and now his wall of denial was broken by her and she even abandoned him. The healing might be able to begin between him and his friends now that the damage might stop, since he won’t have anything to be defensive about/in denial about anymore. I think making amends looks messy like this, it won’t look anywhere near perfect, and it’s good that we can hold up standards that reflect the good person he’s been before. Just try not to expect it. Sandy put him through a lot lately and he’s been lashing out in denial. Now he won’t be able to do that much anymore. I’m sure there will be a lot of consequences to take on but I don’t think he won’t take them on. Mike isn’t irredeemable.. he’s just been problematic lately, and hopefully he’ll learn and grow and do better.

So avoid him now. You saying that help your case? Mike need Lucy to shut it down now. He’s not in the best mentality now. He’s not. Leaning from Sandy soon as Sandy told him to tell her to chill out. Soon as Lucy develops. He get mix feelings. See she’s not paying no mind. He’s clawing at her remarks then shy to say anything. Yeah he’s stupid. Teenage boys need to just breath sometimes. He needs to.

lucy KNOWS how much sandy meant to mike (frustratingly so) …so hearing this news coming from him definitely puts in perspective on what she thinks mike is going through rn.. i want her to turn back for now and not indulge him on it because mike have this tendency on using her as a comfort blanket when it comes to his troubles with sandy, but at the same time I feel she probably sympathize with his situation too : ( because no matter what. I don’t think she really stops caring about him no matter how much she rewires herself to stop letting her feelings be manipulated by what mike expects of her…

Oh boy, that’s pretty much as it is. Sandy doesn’t depend on Mike anymore and Lucy already stopped depending on Mike. Mike’s not a good spot here, anyway.

Again, he still makes it about him and his problems really. You can see she cares in her reactions, but really Lucy needs to stand her ground. They can work it out in time, but right now is not the time to work it out. Mike needs to sort himself out first, some time in introspection, and begin a long list of apologies.

SO really Lucy should lay some ground rules before really any of this. She can help him let things out, but she still isn’t part of Mike’s life. He really needs to make apologies before that step can even be made… and it really is up to her to choose if she wants him back in his life anyway. Preferably as a friend and nothing more, at least for now.

Mike, you selfish piece of cat poo. Lucy don’t comfort him, he need to LEARN.

I hope Lucy has her phone on her so she can call Daisy, Paulo and Mike’s mom to come and help him out.

Lucy might be able to empathize with him and be there for him but it is not the best thing for either of them.

I would like to see Lucy say something along the lines of “go see” “ talk to your other friends” “You do have people in your life that care about you” …something along that lines.

They do need to talk…just not right after Mike got Dumped. Life isn’t fair.

Truth~!

goddamnit Mike, and this shows that Lucy is still such a good and wonderful girl at heart. Mike must apologize and let her go on her way. She’s waaaay better this way now, and he can’t go over there saying “it hurts to see you like this” that’s stupid, she’s super better now.

YAAAAS GET EM LUCY! Nooooo…dont look back at him haha

Lucy: (Yes, now’s my chance!)

I really hope not. She’s so much better off without him in her life.

The appropriate thing to do is call his friends. Lucy doesn’t need to be his shoulder right now though I’m sure she empathizes with him.

Does he really have any left? Maybe Abbey?

I’m pretty sure Sandy was honest and up front about the fact that she was struggling between the idea of getting together with the other guy.

Nothing was said about her actually cheating on him.

She was thinking about it, yes, but nothing was confirmed.

This is a guilt trip Mike is using to get Lucy to cooperate.

Based on her words and the way she allowed that relationship to develop with the other guy… she was emotionally cheating. Not all cheating is genitalia play.

That’s true, but he wasn’t given any evidence of her actually going out with the guy or hanging out with him on her free time.

Mike worded it in a way that is made for anyone to think the worst.

He’s guilt tripping Lucy because he’s still in that pattern of dependence.

He needs Lucy to tell him everything will be okay and to give in to his woe is me act.

But she understands now, so she won’t give him the satisfaction.

I bet she’ll walk away from him and he’ll keep spiraling to the very bottom.

Where he’ll either pick himself up or someone else will.

Or something worse is going to happen.

I like how Michaels made up this image of Lucy that still depends on him, while she’s been doing her best to live a healthy and toxic free life.

Just gonna chime in that Mike’s “it hurts to see you like this” comment feels much more localized to Mike’s experience than it would be to us as readers.

I think there’s a “it hurts to see you [isolating yourself/me] like this [because I was the one who pushed you away],” but the stuff in brackets is stuff that’s being left unsaid in this moment. Lucy is absolutely doing much better than she was, but the relationship between her and Mike is totally severed right now. Mike can only see the world through his own eyes, and he’s still very much a self-centered teen. It makes sense to me that he’s gonna feel Lucy’s distance more than he is gonna see the stuff she’s been up to, especially since she’s mostly kept to herself.

I want to believe that him saying this is mostly him shooting off at the mouth and that he’s got no malicious intent, BUT how Lucy feels about it is not really what I’m exploring here. I’m just trying to find the most sympathetic read for Mike in this moment, even though I can also understand people thinking he brought it on himself. He’s certainly done himself no favors.

okay so he’s just being a massive creep so far, this is great

Lucy is being extremely patient with him all things considered, so good on her at least ?

How About saying “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for being so Stupid to Choose a Cheating bitch on a Phone over my friends i have around me .” that sounds like a Nice start.

Lucy: “No way. Not possible,” they said. But it’s true.

She’s been cheating on you, Mike? Well yes, but actually no. If ‘catching feelings’ is cheating, then maybe Paulo was in the right when he said you were cheating on Sandy.

But Mike was always upfront and honest with Sandy about everything. Sandy purposely ghosted him and withheld her feelings from him. She cheated.

Ok but she didn’t start a relationship. She just realized she may like this guy more than she liked Mike. And well, this is a person who understands her schedule and she gets to see everyday and talk to versus her boyfriend who lives miles away and she rarely spends time with. Even in the chapter when she shows up for a fashion she wasn’t even there that long. And when she came to visit him it was only for one day. The only thing shes really at fault for is not telling him sooner that she felt this way. But she did say that she did turn the guy down at first but then felt guilty because she did like him back. At least she had the intention to stay true to Mike and just felt guilty about liking someone else. I would say it was an emotional affair at the most

Lucy clearly has her head on straight still. She may be compassionate, but Mike only cares about himself and she’ll see this. I highly doubt she’ll put up with it, and whether he wants to or not, Mike will finally know how she felt when he tossed her aside all that time ago.