How Sweet It is

by Sophie Gunn

  “Everything?”

  “She even sat on his lap at one point. He was clearly the cutest boy in the room. But he wouldn’t budge. She ended up doing math for two hours with a greasy boy in broken glasses with horrible breath. I dressed up like that poor boy last Halloween and everyone knew exactly who I was.”

  Tay smiled. “That’s cruel.”

  “Just a little. It was all in good fun. Anyway, Jill threatened to dress up like Ethan this Halloween before his letter came. But I don’t think even she’d dare now.”

  “So you two were already enemies because she’d kicked you out of the clique, and then Ethan made it worse?” He put his feet up on the coffee table. He’d kicked off his shoes, and she studied his long, thin feet. Then his ankles. She wished she could study further.

  “I probably shouldn’t have teased her about it the next day. In the lunchroom. In front of everyone.”

  “You probably should have.” He wanted to touch her, but also didn’t want her to stop talking.

  “Jill always won. Always. She had the money and the social status and the looks. But this one time, I had won. It wasn’t like she didn’t deserve a little razzing. She was the kind of girl who’d walk by my lunch table and knock my drink to the floor just for the fun of it.” Lizzie watched out the window as a late gaggle of geese flew south over the lake. “She did that every day to some kids. Nina, for instance. I really hated her for that.

  “But Ethan wasn’t just about her. I fell for him hard. And he took advantage so fast, it makes my head spin to think about it. Next thing I knew, I was pregnant. He immediately transferred to Oxford. And was gone. That part of the story is fast.”

  “England? The coward!” Tay said. “I’m definitely going to have to get out of Galton before he comes, because I’m going to want to level him.”

  “No. It’s okay. He split, but we could have stopped him, sued him for money or responsibility or whatever. But we weren’t that kind of family. My parents were so ashamed of me. They just wanted to keep it as quiet as they could. They were climbers, trying to be more than they were. I had ruined everything for them.”

  “So you just let him go,” Tay said.

  “Like Candy let you go,” she said, suddenly realizing the parallel. “I didn’t want any part of him. It was better with him gone.”

  They sat for a while in silence. She touched his arm, traced down his elbow to his fingers. She watched his face. Nothing rebelled inside him, not a single cell. He was shocked, but encouraged, and he wanted her to know. He moved closer to her. “Can he make it up to you when he comes back?” Tay asked.

  Lizzie shrugged. “I moved on. He owes Paige something. But not me. I’m over it.”

  “Maybe that’s what Candy thinks: that I owe her mother, not her.” He narrowed his lips. “Maybe that’s why she thinks I’m so crazy to try to get involved. She thinks I can’t make it right with her.”

  Lizzie put her hand on his hand. Her touch was so gentle, he closed his eyes to take it all in. He waited for his mind to plunge into flashbacks, for his body to retreat into numbness. But it didn’t happen.

  “I think Candy needs to take time,” she said.

  He nodded. “Yeah, but when a fatal accident happens, you start to understand that life is short. That you don’t have time.”

  They were holding hands and it felt completely natural, like they’d never not held hands. She went on with her story. “Anyway, we didn’t think anyone would find out I was pregnant. The plan was that I’d stay in school until I started to show, then I’d go to my aunt’s in Rochester, make a life for myself there.”

  “Banished?” he said. “That’s so 1955.”

  “I think it was natural to want to run. I was ashamed. All I wanted was to get away.” She paused. “It’s what you did, in a way, Tay.”

  “No. I did the opposite. I wanted the shame. I chased it by coming here.”

  “That’s so twenty-first century,” she said.

  “Didn’t quite work out, though.”

  “Well, it didn’t quite work out for me either. Because Jill Kennedy found out. Her father was a professor and had been Ethan’s advisor at Galton. Turns out Ethan and Jill even knew each other, because the Kennedys would have dinners for their advisees at their house every once in a while. They’d also have students who lived far away over for holidays. Anyway, Jill overheard her dad talking about what had happened to Ethan, put two and two together, and told the whole school. She knew everything.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t good. Once it was out, there was no reason to leave. So I quit school, stayed, had Paige, lived with my parents while I worked at the diner.”

  “But you forgave Jill? Why? It was a terrible thing she did.” He was playing with her fingers, turning them this way and that, studying them.

  “It was. I hated her for a long time. I’d pass her mother’s real estate signs all over town, and I’d want to rip them out and throw them into the gorges.”

  “But you never did?”

  “Never. Nina did once, though, but that’s another story. Anyway, a year after school ended, I was working in the diner one night. It was the Blizzard of the Century.”

  “I remember that. It hit Queens, too. But not so bad.”

  “That night the Last Chance diner had planned to be open all night, storm or no storm. I volunteered for the hardship duty, since I was desperate for the extra money and my parents could watch Paige, since we all lived together. To tell the truth, I was pumped. I liked extreme weather those days. It made me feel at home, as if the world were finally feeling as intense as I did. By the afternoon, the sky had darkened and the weather service was warning of road closings, power outages, ice, frogs, locusts, the end of days. I didn’t care. I felt like: Bring it on! I wasn’t the happiest person then, with the baby and trying to figure out what had happened to my life. All the crew had gone but Freddie and me. By four o’clock even the die-hard customers had bailed. So Gertrude, who owns the diner, said it’s the Storm of the Century, shut it down and go home. She lived the farthest, so she left me and Freddie to close up.

  “So Freddie split as quick as he could for Lucifer’s. He wrote, ‘Closed Till Hell Unfreezes’ in the frost on the window on his way out.” Lizzie smiled, remembering. “I was closing up and Bruce Springsteen was cranked on the radio so loud, I almost didn’t hear the banging on the door. It was Jill.”

  Tay was listening, rapt, so she went on.

  “I hadn’t been face-to-face with Jill since senior year.”

  “You didn’t see her around town?” Tay asked.

  “Sure. I’d see her tooling around in her shiny pink Mini Cooper. She was helping her mom in real estate right out of school. But I hadn’t seen her up close.”

  “No college for the princess?”

  “No. I never asked her why. I guess because she could already make money with her mom, so who needed it? I love Jill, but she wasn’t exactly a scholar.”

  Tay shifted closer and without thinking much about it, she stretched her legs across his lap. “I told her we were closed, but—” Lizzie paused. She tried not to smile.

  “What?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t smile since we’re friends now, and I really do love her. But at the time, it had been like Christmas. She was wearing strappy high heels a mile high and a see-through red teddy under her parka. And that was it.”

  “Oh, my,” Tay said. “I like this story.”

  She kicked him playfully in the ribs and he caught her foot and held it and stroked it.

  “She was going to spend the storm with her boyfriend, Jake, who lived in an apartment over the vacuum store two blocks down. You know, Cole’s Vac and Sew? Her plan was to surprise him with champagne and, well, herself. But since her Mini did lousy in the snow, she had called a cab to deliver her to Jake’s. Unfortunately, when she got there, Jake was otherwise occupied with another woman and her cab had already split.” Lizzie paused. “She was too pissed
to go back for decent clothes. So we tried to call another cab for her, but the dispatcher said they had called in all their cars. So there she was, stuck. With me—her worst enemy in Galton. We were the only place open except for Lucifer’s. And she wasn’t about to go in there dressed like that.”

  “You must have been having fun,” Tay said. “Payback.”

  “You know, the Last Chance is at the bottom of the two steepest hills in Galton. Freddie always said that makes it the place everything in town ends up eventually, by sheer force of gravity and human nature. It just seemed inevitable that we’d have to hash it out one day. I swear, that day in the diner, I could still hear her taunting me.” Lizzie mimicked a high-pitched singsong. “But Ethan Pond isn’t here anymore. His mummy transferred him to Oxford to get him away from Galton trash.” She scrunched up her lips. “That was how I learned that Ethan had left town. He didn’t even say good-bye.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  Tay spun her around and put his arm around her and she snuggled into him, fitting perfectly. “Jill couldn’t go anywhere in the storm without real shoes. I was wearing my sneakers, but my boots were in the back because I had planned on walking home. I could have lent her the boots, probably even scrounged up a pair of chef whites and sent her on her way. But I didn’t want to.”

  “Revenge?”

  “Not so much.” She paused. “Okay, maybe a tinge.” She smiled up at him. “Mostly, I was lonely. And I could tell she was lonely. I remember thinking, Someone would have picked me up if I was stuck. Someone would have come and gotten me. And there was no one to pick her up.”

  He played with her hair, stroking it, smelling it, dying to kiss it.

  “So we ate pie and drank coffee for hours, watching the snow fall. She told me about Jake, every raunchy detail. And I tried to tell her about Paige, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting. She kept cutting me off, changing the subject. It was weird, Tay. Nothing had changed. Not really. Jill was still a rich bitch, so sure she’d get her way she’d pranced out half-naked in a blizzard. I was still me, playing catch-up, working and struggling and trying to hold on to what I had. We were exactly the same as we were in high school. Still stuck in this town. Still hating each other for no good reason. We didn’t decide to do something about it. We didn’t decide to forgive each other. It just happened. She said she was really sorry and I said I was sorry for baiting her, and then Jill started coming in on Wednesday mornings after that night. I liked talking to her. I had friends, don’t get me wrong, but they were all predictable, homogeneous, loyal. Jill meant more because we had a past that mattered. And she was fascinating in a way only someone who sees the world from a completely different vantage point could be.”

  “So just like that, she said she was sorry and you forgave her?” Tay asked.

  “I did. And you know, it felt good.”

  He kissed the top of her head. Then he stretched out, so he was lying on the couch, and she spooned in front of him.

  “It sucks to be alone,” she said.

  He was glad she couldn’t see his face, because he felt as if she was talking about him.

  “Forgiving let us be together.” She rolled around to face him and pressed her body along the length of him and he pushed his leg between her legs and she let him and even pulled him closer. “Neither one of us wanted to be alone.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, pressed his body into her. He couldn’t get close enough.

  They lay like that for a while, not talking.

  “I wish I could get to that place with Candy,” he said, nuzzling the top of her head with his lips. “There can’t be a person more alone in this world than her.”

  “Sure there is,” Lizzie said. “You.” She looked up at him, her huge brown eyes so close, he could see each eyelash.

  “Not me. I have a beautiful woman beside me.”

  “Hmmm, you do, don’t you?”

  “And I’m hoping she’ll even kiss me.”

  She did.

  They both waited to see how he’d react. He waited for the pain and guilt and numbness, but they didn’t come.

  “And maybe, she’ll even let me kiss her.”

  She did.

  And then she slid her hand down his chest and into the waistband of his jeans and he knew that there was no turning back.

  No matter how painful the consequences, he couldn’t have cared less.

  Lizzie couldn’t get enough of Tay’s warmth as he pressed against her. She wanted more. She slid her hand under his shirt, feeling that expanse of his skin for the first time. “Mmm…”

  He whipped the shirt off and finally, finally, she got to see the full width of his chest, to touch it, to kiss it. She bit and he moaned and she raised above him and took off her shirt and he moaned again. “Lizzie.”

  So she dropped back down to him and he unhooked her bra and then a flurry of discarding clothes and he was on top of her, his hands stroking, soothing, pulling. He splayed a hand over her breast and her nipple responded, leading the rest of her body into an explosion of need and heat. “Tay. God.”

  “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he said, taking her mouth into his. “You want to go to the bedroom?”

  “No. I don’t know. Don’t care.” She pushed her hips against him and felt his hardness react. “Protection?”

  “Hmmm?” He was nuzzling her neck, kissing, biting, licking down her neck to her breasts. He took his time with each of them, then moved downward, downward, her hips held firmly in his hands.

  “Tay. Wait.”

  He came back up. “Only a woman would say wait at a time like this.”

  “Make love to me. It’s what I want.”

  “Oh, hell, no. I know all about you and what you want. If you say you want to make love, you probably really want to play Scrabble.” He jumped off the couch, went to the bookcase, leaving her on the couch, splayed, panting, hot, completely naked, and oh so bothered.

  “Tay!”

  He was back in an instant. “Just kidding.” He held up a condom. “I hate Scrabble.” He tore open the condom and she helped him put it on and then he was back on top of her, spreading her legs with his. “Are you sure, Lizzie?”

  “Tay.”

  He moaned something she couldn’t understand as he pushed inside her.

  She gasped with the sensation of it. It had been too long. She grabbed at his shoulders, his back, his ass, pulling him as close as she could. “Why did we wait so long for this?”

  “I have no idea,” he practically growled. “God, Lizzie. You’re so soft, so perfect.” He moved inside her and she arched up to meet him and with every thrust, she felt one more piece of her come undone until there was nothing left of her but spinning molecules that all exploded at once, coming back together to land in the same shape, but forever changed.

  She felt him shudder, and moan, and hold her tight until he had also exploded, and landed, and settled.

  She wondered if he was okay.

  He rolled her so that she lay on him and he closed his eyes and neither one spoke for a while.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m amazing,” he said.

  She kissed his chin. Bit his shoulder. “That’s amazing. Are you fixed, then? Just like that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll hit me later.”

  “Maybe.”

  “How about another story?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I can handle another story.” She didn’t want to let him go. She felt herself drifting off into sleep, but it was almost two in the afternoon and she had to get back to work at three. “You tell me a story.”

  “Once upon a time, there was this beautiful woman, and she had this broken-down house, and this messed-up guy came to fix it, not knowing that she was magic—”

  “A true story!” she protested.

  “It’s true,” he said.

  “Okay, so what happened?”

  “I have no idea. It didn’t make a lick of
sense. But it was awesome. And they lived happily ever after.”

  “Your stories suck,” she said.

  “That’s why it’s your job to tell the stories. C’mon. One more. Tell me about Georgia.”

  “Next time.”

  “When’s next time?” he asked. “Tomorrow? Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “It’s the weekend tomorrow. I was going to build a new path with Paige.”

  He rose on one elbow. “You and Paige are going to build a path?”

  She hit his shoulder. “Don’t be a jerk. We can do it.”

  “I’ll help,” he said.

  “You won’t. You’ve done enough. We’re going to do it. A mother-daughter project. You’re awfully cute, but you’re not invited.”

  He sighed. “Okay. Monday, then. Can I see you Monday?”

  “I’ll come here.”

  “You’ll finish telling me about the Enemy Club? How Georgia and Nina joined? I can’t wait to hear what Georgia did to make you her enemy.” He stroked her side, her belly, her cheek.

  She could stay here for eternity. Except that she couldn’t. She pulled away from him and started to get dressed. “I have to go, Tay.”

  “Did Georgia try to steal Ethan, too? C’mon, a little teaser.”

  “It wasn’t so much what she did to me. It was what I did to her,” Lizzie said. She straightened her hair in the small mirror by the door.

  “Give me a hint. I can’t wait till Monday,” he begged.

  Lizzie smiled. “Okay, one little hint. But that’s it.” She kissed him, taking in all she could before she had to get back to the real world. “I set her on fire.”

  CHAPTER

  31

  The truck pulled onto Lizzie’s street at dawn and backed up to Lizzie’s driveway with an annoying high-pitched beep.

  It took four beeps for Paige to throw open her bedroom window. “Mom? What time is it? What are you doing?” Paige looked to the neighbors’ houses, concern knitting her brow, and Lizzie fought her urge to look, too. She failed. Judy Roth was already at her curtain post across the street.