Free Ain't She Sweet? by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page B

about Sugar Beth coming into the shop. Otherwise, she’d be giving it too much importance. But as she tried to frame the words, the wineglass she’d been rinsing slipped in her fingers and broke in the sink.
    “You okay?” He rose and came toward her. She wanted him to wrap his arms around her, but he studied the mess instead.
    “I’m fine. Why don’t you make coffee while I clean this up?”
    As she tossed the bigger pieces of glass in the trash, she wondered why she didn’t feel more satisfaction about today. The years had taken their toll on Sugar Beth, and for the first time in their lives, Winnie had come out ahead.
    She’d begun to bloom her senior year in high school after Sugar Beth and Ryan had left for college. She’d stopped overeating and found the courage to have her hair cut. Inside, she might have been the same awkward teenager, but outside she began to move with a new assurance that only grew more pronounced after Griffin and Sabrina’s marriage.
    Suddenly, she was the rich girl who lived at Frenchman’s Bride.
    Winnie’s fingers crept to the pearls on her throat. The stricken expression on Sugar Beth’s face had been the culmination of every revenge fantasy she’d ever entertained.
    She should have enjoyed it more.
    The past wove its way through the sound of the furnace clicking on and the smell of the coffee beans Ryan was grinding. She was sixteen again, taking a shortcut through the gym when she’d tripped and her algebra notebook had fallen open at Sugar Beth’s feet.
    “Give it back!” Winnie’s voice, high and shrill, had bounced off the gym rafters. But Sugar Beth had only stepped higher on the bleachers, the algebra notebook open in her hands. Tall and willowy, blond and beautiful, Sugar Beth had been evil all the way to the bottom of her heart.
    “Listen up, y’all. Winnie’s been doin’ a lot more than solving problems in advanced algebra.”
    The Seawillows abandoned their chatter. Winnie’s heart was pounding so fast she was afraid it would burst. “Sugar Beth, I’m warning you . . .”
    But Sugar Beth just smiled and took another step up into the bleachers. Winnie started after her, but her sneaker caught on the seat. She winced as she stumbled. “Give it to me.”
    Sugar Beth smirked. “I don’t know why you’re getting so uptight. It’s just girls.”
    Amy touched the gold cross at her neck. “Maybe you shouldn’t read it if Winnie doesn’t want you to.”
    Sugar Beth ignored her. “Y’all aren’t going to believe this.”
    Winnie blinked furiously against her tears. Just once she’d like to be able to defend herself, but Sugar Beth was too powerful. “That’s private. Give it back right now.”
    “Oh, don’t be so immature.” The gold hoops at Sugar Beth’s ears flashed as she flipped her perfect mane of hair. Then she began to read. “He looked at my naked nipples.”
    The girls laughed, even Amy, although she touched her cross again. Sweat soaked through the underarms of Winnie’s blouse. She’d started writing her fantasies a few months earlier in a special notebook that she kept hidden in the back of her closet, but today in study hall she’d gotten careless. “Stop it, Sugar Beth.”
    “No, don’t stop!” Leeann blasted her bangs with the Aqua Net she kept in her purse, but her eyes stayed glued to Sugar Beth.
    Sugar Beth propped one of her metallic flats on the bleacher in front of her. “Next, he slipped his broad, strong hand into my tiny lace panties.” The way Sugar Beth emphasized the word tiny served as a not so subtle reminder that Winnie’s panties weren’t all that small. “I moved my legs farther apart.”
    Winnie could never come back to Parrish High.
    “He slid his other hand up the inside of my leg . . .” Sugar Beth’s blue eyes widened in fake shock. “Why, Winnie Davis, this is pornography.”
    “I like it.” Leeann popped a bubble.
    Sugar Beth turned the page. “ ‘I love you, Winnie, with all my abid-ing