Ain't She Sweet? (26 page)

Colin silently cursed Sugar Beth. Did she go out of her way to create trouble? “I suppose it’s only natural for them to be curious about each other.”

“I can’t believe she’s involved Gigi in all this.”

“What do you think Sugar Beth will do to her?”

“You know what she’s capable of.”

“Sugar Beth isn’t eighteen any longer.”

“Let’s get real,” Ryan retorted angrily. “She’s floated through three marriages—the last one made her a certified gold digger. Now she’s broke. Desperate, too, or she’d have told everybody to go to hell on Saturday night and stormed off. Call me overprotective, but I don’t want a woman like that around my daughter.”

Colin hated being dragged into other people’s messes, but he couldn’t see a way to sidestep this one. “Things aren’t always what they seem where Sugar Beth is concerned.”

“You’re defending her?”

“I’m being objective.” Now there was a laugh. Even before yesterday, he’d lost his objectivity where Sugar Beth was concerned.

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve gotten suckered in by her, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t gotten suckered in by anybody.”

“Then fire her.”

“I already did.”

“You did?” Ryan looked surprised, then relieved. “The first good news I’ve heard this weekend. Sorry, pal, I underestimated you. Do you know if she’s left town yet?”

“As to that . . .”

“I should have trusted you. But . . . I’m a little keyed up right now.” He gazed into his coffee mug. “The truth is . . . Winnie’s moved out of the house.”

“What?”

“She’s left. Moved into the apartment over the store.”

Colin was stunned. Ryan and Winnie had the best marriage he’d ever seen. If they couldn’t make a go of it, no one could. “I’m sure it’s only temporary. You and Winnie are the genuine article.”

“Apparently not. It’s like Winnie’s possessed. You know how rational she always is, but lately . . . She thinks I’m still hung up on Sugar Beth. After all these years. And she started talking about not knowing who she was, all that Oprah bullshit. I feel like I don’t know my own wife anymore.”

Colin remembered the way Ryan’s eyes kept straying to Sugar Beth on Saturday night.

By making it possible for her to stay in Parrish, Colin had inadvertently hurt the two people whose friendship he most cherished.

“I’ve tried to reason with Winnie, but she won’t listen. She didn’t even talk to Gigi before she drove off. She left that little task up to me.”

“How did Gigi take it?” Colin asked, not really wanting to know.

“Oh, she’s taking it fine. I said that her mother was stressed out because she had so much work to do at the shop, and she’d decided to settle in there for a few days to get things cleared up without any distractions. Gigi bought it, but she’s a smart kid, and it won’t take her long to figure out what’s really going on.”

“I’m sure Winnie will come to her senses before then.”

“It’ll happen a lot quicker if Sugar Beth is gone. I’ve never believed in throwing my weight around, but if I find out somebody else has hired her—”

“Hey, Ryan . . .” Sugar Beth waltzed into the kitchen, a bottle of drain opener in her hand. Colin wanted to strangle her. She couldn’t have stayed upstairs until Ryan left. Oh, no. In her screwed-up head, that would have been a sign of cowardice, and how could she let a day pass without giving a hard time to as many people as possible?

“Your shower’s running great now, Colin. Add the sixty bucks a plumber would have charged you to my paycheck.”

Coffee slopped over the edge of Ryan’s mug as he slammed it on the counter. “You said you fired her!”

“I did. Unfortunately, Sugar Beth still doesn’t listen well.”

“It gets in the way of my self-serving lifestyle.” She headed for the sink, where she bent down to put the drain opener away.

Colin tore his eyes from her bottom, clad this morning in a pair of deep purple cigarette pants. “Exactly the sort of remark that makes people line up to hate you, Sugar Beth. But then you know that very well.”

“You think?”

He refused to play her game. “Ryan stopped by to tell me that Winnie’s moved out.

Because of you.”

She straightened and smiled. “No kidding. Now that just about makes my day.”

Ryan’s mouth hardened. “That’s low, even coming from you.”

Colin wouldn’t let her weasel out of this with wisecracks. “Sugar Beth doesn’t mean it.

She’s deliberately antagonizing you.”

“I sort of mean it,” Sugar Beth said. “You and Winnie pissed me off royally yesterday with Gigi.”

“You were way out of line,” Ryan said.

“In my humble opinion, you both need to lighten up with her.”

Colin cut in before there was blood. “I’m sure Ryan isn’t interested in hearing any of your opinions on child rearing.”

“His loss. I know a hell of a lot more about headstrong teenage girls than he does.”

Colin gave her his most quelling look. “You’re baiting him again.”

Ryan studied first one of them and then the other. “What’s going on with you two?”

“Nothing.”

Unfortunately, they spoke together, automatically making them look like liars. Sugar Beth recovered first and handled the situation in her own way. “Relax, Ryan. Colin’s done his best to get rid of me, but I’m blackmailing him with some unsavory facts I’ve unearthed about his past, which may or may not involve the ritual deaths of small animals, so if my body ends up in a ditch somewhere, tell the police to start their interrogations with him. Plus you might warn everybody to be careful with their cats.”

Amazing. Sometimes her cheek surprised even him. Ryan, however, had lost his sense of humor. “You still don’t care how many people you hurt as long as you get what you want.”

Sugar Beth liked to sting, but she didn’t have much appetite for genuine hurt, and all the amusement vanished from her eyes. “I don’t like being the bearer of bad news,” she said quietly, almost gently, “but your marriage was already in trouble or my showing up wouldn’t have sent your wife out the door.”

“You don’t know a thing about my marriage.”

“I know that Winnie’s moved out.” She regarded him sympathetically. “And you seem to think all you have to do to get her back is see the last of me. But I doubt it’s going to be that easy. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have some errands to run.”

Sixty seconds later, she was out the door.

By the time Colin got rid of Ryan, the house had closed in on him. How had a man who cherished his privacy let everything get so far out of hand? Nothing he’d written so far that morning was worth keeping, so he grabbed a jacket and headed out the back door.

He’d thought about this long enough. It was time for action.

Everybody in the lunchroom was watching her, or at least it felt that way. Gigi’s clammy hands gripped the plastic tray as she gazed around for somebody—anybody!—she could sit with. She should have spent lunch period in the library, but she’d told herself she was claiming her power today, no matter how scary it was and no matter how much her parents hated her. Now, though, she decided she was too young to claim her power. She should have waited till ninth grade. Or maybe tenth.

Until now, she’d been feeling pretty good about her first day back in school. Nobody’d said too much about her getting suspended, and Jake Higgins told her she looked cool.

Jake had acne and was like four feet tall, but still . . . Before she’d gone to bed last night she’d painted her fingernails with black polish and borrowed this black T-shirt her mom never wore because she said it was too small. This morning, she’d put on an old pair of black jeans that were tight and too short, but, with black socks, she didn’t think anybody noticed, and she’d found a choker necklace she’d strung in seventh grade with brown beads. It wasn’t the best Goth look she’d ever seen—she needed a cool belt with silver rivets or a black skirt with black-and-white tights—but it made her feel sort of strong and reckless.

Win-i-fred had spent the night at the store so she could get an early start on her inventory, and her dad had been in a crappy mood, so Gigi’d waited till she got to school before she ducked into the rest room and put on some really dark eye makeup. It made her light eyes look spooky and mysterious, which was cool. Her parents couldn’t get any madder at her than they already were, so tonight she intended to cut some choppy layers in her hair around her face and maybe put red streaks in if she could find a red marker. It felt good getting rid of her old baggy clothes.

A seventh grader bumped into her, and her bean burrito nearly slid off the tray. She couldn’t keep standing here. Chelsea was at their old table, throwing her dirty looks. She was sitting with Vicki Lenson, who Gigi knew for a fact had done oral sex so she’d be popular with the boys. Just the thought of oral sex totally grossed out Gigi. She’d never
ever
do that, not even if she was married.

Kelli Willman and all the girls Gigi used to hang out with were sitting near the front.

There was an empty seat, but Gigi didn’t feel powerful enough to take it. The thought of eating lunch by herself made her armpits sweaty. Only total losers sat by themselves.

Somebody laughed at Gwen Lu’s table. All the geeks were there. Gwen and Jenny Berry.

Sachi Patel and Gillian Granger. Which would be worse? Sitting by herself or sitting with the geeks? Somebody really powerful would admit that Gwen Lu and Gillian Granger were the most interesting girls in eighth grade and nice, too. But if she sat with them today, she couldn’t turn her back on them tomorrow. That would make her as bad as Kelli.

Panic hit her. She didn’t want everybody thinking she was a geek, but she couldn’t keep standing here. Her feet began to move. She didn’t know exactly where she was going until she found herself standing next to Gwen’s table. Her tongue stuck in her mouth.

“Can I sit with you?”

“Okay.” Gwen moved her tray a little to give her room, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it. Gigi sat down and unwrapped her burrito. Gwen and Sachi were talking about their science fair projects. Finally, Gwen asked Gigi what she was going to do.

“Something about cows and why everybody should be a vegetarian.” Gigi opened her bag of chips.

“Gillian’s thinking about being a vegetarian,” Gwen said, talking a little too loud. “But I like meat too much. I couldn’t ever do it.”

“I think it’d be cool,” Jenny said. “I love animals. But I talked to my mom about it, and she freaked. She said I need protein.”

Which led to a big and very interesting discussion about how parents didn’t ever want you to do anything unique. Then Gigi said she thought they all needed to make sacrifices for the planet, and she knew Gwen was starting to think about it because she didn’t finish her hot dog.

Gigi was surprised what a good time she had at lunch—nobody even asked her about being suspended—and she was sorry when the warning bell rang. After they took their trays up and got rid of their trash, Gwen and Gillian left for gym class. Gigi had English, and she headed for her locker to get her notebook. She’d just closed it back up when she saw Kelli and Heather Burke coming toward her. She started to put her head down and pretend she didn’t see them like she’d been doing all year, but she changed her mind and walked up to them instead.

Kelli looked so surprised that she stopped chewing her gum, and Heather’s cheeks got sort of red, like she was afraid something embarrassing might happen. Gigi pulled her books tighter to her chest and spoke fast before she chickened out. “Kelli, I want you to know you really hurt my feelings when you said all that stuff about me behind my back, about me being a rich bitch. I think if people are really friends and they have problems with each other, they should just be honest, so I guess we weren’t as good friends as I thought. And if I was acting stuck-up, I’m really sorry. I don’t feel stuck-up anymore.”

Kelli sort of hunched her shoulders, like she only knew what to say about people behind their back and not to their face. Gigi felt kind of sorry for her because Kelli didn’t know about claiming her power.

“It’s not my fault,” Kelli finally said, sounding really immature. “Nobody liked you.”

Gigi felt herself starting to get mad all over again, but she knew she’d be giving up her power if she lost her temper. “I was being immature,” she said, which totally surprised Kelli because she wasn’t used to total honesty.

Heather spoke up for the first time. “I think maybe we were being immature, too.”

Kelli didn’t say anything, she just looked down at the floor, and Gigi walked away. She didn’t know if she and Kelli could ever be friends again, or if she even wanted them to be, but when she got to English class, she answered every question.

Sugar Beth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “A job? You’re offering me a job?”

“I’m desperate, and at least you read.” Jewel set a stack of books on the counter near the register. “Meredith quit without giving me notice. One phone call from an old lover, and she was on her way to Jackson.”

It had been evident at Colin’s dinner party that Meredith was more than an employee, and Jewel’s offhandedness didn’t fool her. “I’m sorry. Not about the job; I couldn’t be happier. But a broken heart isn’t any fun.”

Jewel shrugged her small, graceful shoulders. “I’ll get over it. We weren’t right for each other. We both knew it. But we were lonely, and, let’s face it, the pickin’s are slim in Parrish for girls who like girls.”

Sugar Beth had to say it. “You understand, don’t you, that hiring me could hurt your business?”

Jewel smiled for the first time since Sugar Beth had walked into the store. “Are you kidding? After what I saw on Saturday night, customers are going to line up just to get inside and torture you.”

Unfortunately, she was probably right. Still, Sugar Beth accepted the job.

On her way back to Mockingbird Lane, she told herself this would make everything so much simpler. It wasn’t good for her to be around Colin so much. She flipped on the radio and hummed along with Lucinda Williams as she sung a needy-woman song, but that didn’t help shut down her thoughts. She had to stop overdramatizing and put things in perspective. Yesterday had been nothing more than a hot fudge sundae. She’d gone without one too long, so the craving had built up until she hadn’t been able to think about anything else. But now that she’d given in and eaten her fill, she wouldn’t need another for a long time.