Boyfriend Bargain by Ilsa Madden-Mills
8
Sugar
Happy Monday, I mutter as my alarm goes off at five o’clock. Time to get the donuts—literally. It’s my job on Mondays to bring in breakfast for the crew who’s cleaning the club from top to bottom from the weekend, plus run a few errands for Mara. Blowing out a breath, I get up and grab a towel for the shower. My movements are a bit sluggish since I tossed and turned all night with weird dreams. There was one in particular where I sat in my poetry classroom with a very naked and very sexy Zack Morgan as my professor.
I come out of the bathroom, not bothering to be quiet since Julia never came home. I imagine she’s tucked up tight in a football player’s dorm room right now.
I look around for my clothes from last night. Everything is littered on the floor where I tossed it as I came in and crashed. My eyes flare. There’s only one thing missing: my coat. I let out a cry of frustration and tears well when I picture it on the floor at the Kappa house getting trampled by stilettos and sneakers, or even worse, picked up and put on by someone. That coat cost me over a hundred dollars on sale. I blow out a breath and plop on my bed, staring up at the yellow-stained ceiling and the chipped paint on the walls. Not only did I lose my coat, I’m living in dormitory hell while Bennett is basking in an apartment with a fresh coat of paint—that I helped with—and a nice, toasty heating system. There’s probably a groupie curled up next to him right now.
I’m still muttering to myself when I put my hair up in a high ponytail a few minutes later. I pull on a bright pink knitted cap with a hole at the top that lets my hair hang out. After my tortoiseshell glasses are on, I throw on leggings and a Dunder Mifflin sweatshirt. On my way out the door, I walk past my desk, see the waitlist letter from Vanderbilt Law, and grimace.
I replay an old childhood fantasy where I’m driving down to Davenport, Alabama, in my super expensive white Mercedes, dressed in a slick business lady pantsuit with a huge I told you so smile on my face. I pull up the mossy tree-lined drive, get out of my beautiful car, and approach the big plantation-style house.
I knock, and someone comes to the door.
Maybe it’s one of my half-siblings. Maybe it’s his wife. Maybe it’s him, my father.
Regardless, the person is blown away by my stylish self and invites me in.
But I don’t take one step into that big shiny house with the Southern Living front porch.
No sir.
I just smile and tell them how great my life is. I show them my fancy law degree and tell them how wonderful I turned out despite the gutter I dragged myself out of.
My hands clench.
“You are enough just the way you are,” I mutter, repeating my mama’s words, but today it rings untrue and I exhale.
Torturing myself, I pick up the letter to put it away, but before I tuck it between my textbooks on the bookshelf, I unfold the paper and skim over it.
After careful consideration, the selection committee is unable to offer you admission at this time, but we would like to offer you a spot on our waitlist. We realize this is a disappointment, but there were many students with promise who we were unable to admit. It is important you know we do not rank students on our waitlist, and we strongly encourage you to apply to other institutions…
Warmest Regards, William R. Fitzgerald, Dean of Admissions
“Blah, blah, blah,” I say bitterly to no one, and instead of putting the letter away, I wad it up in a tight ball and throw it in the trash. I have a copy of it in an email anyway. Ugh.
I take another look in the mirror and blanch at my paleness. I need more sleep. With a groan, I pilfer through my makeup bag and swipe on my favorite lipstick, Cabernet Crisis. Seems fitting.
I did have crazy sex with a hockey player last night…
“That was a complete lapse in judgment, and I’m going to pretend it never happened,” I say to my reflection. I blot my lips. “And you really need to stop talking to yourself. People are going to think you’re crazy.”
There’s a small bruise on the right side of my neck, and my heart pounds, going back to last night and how…spectacular it was.
“Forget him. Trouble all day long, Sugar. His nickname is the Heartbreaker—don’t forget that.” I dab concealer on the hickey and brush powder on top.
Slinging my crossbody on, I open the dorm room door, and a Hawthorne duffle bag that was hanging on the outside of the doorknob falls to the floor.
My first thought is Julia somehow left some clothes out and forgot to bring them in, but then I remember it wasn’t here last night and she isn’t home yet.
Squatting down, I unzip the bag and gasp when I see my black North Face. I hold it up like a dance partner and do a twirl. “Coat, who brought you home?”
Digging a little more, I find a folded note.
It’s too cold in this town for you to go without this. If you want to say thank you, come see me. I’m sure you can figure out where I live.
Z
PS Here’s my phone number in case you don’t have it yet: 555-284-6433
I smirk at his cheekiness. He must have found my coat and seen the address I scrawled on the tag just a couple of weeks ago in case I left it somewhere.
I look down the hallway but the place is empty.
When did he bring it? And how did he get inside a locked-down dorm that doesn’t even open its doors until eight in the morning?
I didn’t hear anyone outside the door last night and I was up for another half-hour when I got home, so it must have been this morning, which means he was up early.
With a sigh, I slip it on over my sweatshirt and head for the exit.
A bit later, most of my surly mood has vanished, and I feel like a kid in a candy store with my nose literally pressed against the glass case. I’m in the donut shop. “I’ll take two dozen chocolate, two dozen plain, and two of those churros. Mara loves those,” I tell Joaquin Rios, the owner, as I straighten up.
He grins, eyes dancing. “That’s it?”
I groan. “Don’t you think that’s enough?”
“Ah.” He shakes his finger at me. “But I have something special. Made it last night—for you.” A small, wiry man with beautiful light brown skin and a lilting Mexican accent, he’s a friend of Mara’s, and I worked here in high school to earn extra cash, which I socked away for college. He bustles off to the back then comes out of the kitchen holding a tray of chocolate donuts with dark sprinkles on top. He’s written Sugar in white icing on one of them. “I made these to celebrate you going to law school and to show our appreciation for your help with the paperwork for the zoning regulations for our food truck.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t get in.
“Oh, that’s so kind.” I fiddle with the zipper on my coat. “You didn’t have to do that. I liked helping you.”
“But it would have taken me days. You went to town hall and figured it out, and now my donut truck is raking in the money.” He laughs, setting the tray down in front of me. “I call these Ding Dong Donuts in your honor. They have a heavy cream filling.”
I huff out a laugh, fighting a sudden urge to let tears fall. Dammit, I will not cry! He’s so nice and I should be thankful and not upset that it’s reminding me I really don’t have a law school to go to in the fall.
He gives me a big pleased smile, and I go around the counter to give him and his wife, Anna, who’s come out of the kitchen, a big hug.
A few minutes later, I’m past the pain—hello, sugar—and sitting in my truck cramming the donut in my mouth and sighing in ecstasy when a muscular body jogs past the front of my vehicle. He’s a big dude, dressed in Hawthorne colors with a black knit hat and blond hair sticking out—
My lovely donut goes flying straight to the floorboard. Zack.
Immediately I duck down in my seat, mostly because it’s automatic and I’m still unsure about last night. I mean, we had hot sex, and I turned him down for a repeat, and now things are…weird.
I ease back up from hunkering down, peeking over in his direction. Dayum. I sigh, taking in the tall body with a trim waist that tapers to muscled legs.
He leans over, breathing in great gulps of air, and I wonder how long he’s been running. Campus is quite a ways away from here, at least five or six miles, though that’s probably nothing to an athlete like him.
He yanks off his hat and shakes out his hair, running a large hand through the strands. A gust of cold air stirs through the morning air and he leans back against the brick of the storefront, his head tilting up to the sky. He drags a hand over his face, and I suck in a breath at the vulnerability that flashes over his features.
What’s he thinking about?
With a deep inhalation, he throws his hat and gloves down on a bench outside the Quickie-Mart and pushes his way inside. The movement is done without thought or worry, as if he’s put them there a hundred times and knows nothing will happen to them. He comes here a lot, I think.
I need to get on the road—I have classes today—but I don’t start my car.
I’m on the second donut when he bursts back out of the door with a pack of Marlboros.
Well, well, well. Mr. Athlete smokes? He doesn’t seem like the type, but then what do I know?
“You only had sex with him,” I mutter under my breath.
With a long stride, he heads to the alley of the building, which I have full view of. Propping himself back up against the brick, he twists the pack open, pulls out a cig, and lights it with a lighter from his jacket.
I study his face, surprised he doesn’t feel me looking, because the man seriously has a sixth sense.
He holds the cigarette with taut fingers and takes a drag, blowing the smoke up in the air. He closes his eyes and rubs at his forehead, lines etched on the skin there and around his mouth.
I swallow, frowning, feeling a tug toward him, an answering call of sadness, perhaps. My chest rises, and part of me wants to get out of the car and go to him—but I think he wants to be alone.
The red light from the cigarette glows as he sucks on it until he stubs it out with his fingers. With a heavy breath out, he puts his hat and gloves back on then jogs over to a trashcan where he tosses the entire pack of cigs. Okaaaay.
He does a few stretches and then takes off, running out of sight toward the street and, of course, I get out of the car to see where he goes.
Southern girls are better than the FBI.
He crosses the street and heads into the entrance of Memorial Park, a large and rather grand cemetery with huge oak trees, a stone entrance, and purple and yellow pansies in the flowerbeds. An interesting place to run, but it does have paths.
I get back in my car, finish my donut, and crank up the engine. No way am I following him there. As far as I’m concerned, my days of trying to get Zack Morgan to notice me are done.
“Urgent” by Foreigner rings out from my phone and I snatch it up.
“Yeah, I’m on my way,” I tell Mara.
“You’re fine. Don’t rush and drive too fast.” Her voice is dry with a slight Southern drawl that’s been fading for the past twenty years she’s lived here.
I sigh. “I won’t.”
“Did you get me a churro?”
“Two.” I smile, picturing her in her purple velour tracksuit in the back office of the Boobie Bungalow, counting the weekend’s take and preparing a bank deposit. Her dyed blonde hair will be in a softly curled Marilyn Monroe style, and she’ll be wearing bright pink lipstick and lots of eyeliner with fake lashes.
After my mom died when I was eleven, she was the first person to arrive at my front door in Alabama. Mama’s good friend since high school, she arranged for her memorial, packed up the trailer, and flew me back to Minneapolis with her. My daddy wanted nothing to do with me. Heck, his name wasn’t even on my birth certificate. Sure, Mara and I could have taken him to court, but if there was one thing I knew for sure at that age, it was that I didn’t want anything to do with the man who’d ruined my mama.
“So what’s up? Did you need something else? I can pop by Costco later if you need cleaning supplies, but if you want more churros, I’m still here.”
“No, just checking on you.” She pauses, and I picture her settling into her leather seat and propping her tiny feet up on her desk. “You seemed down this week. You okay?”
“Mostly. There’s nothing to be done.” My tone isn’t optimistic. Very few waitlisted students manage to secure a spot. I have to accept the truth. “I’m a reject.”
“You’re not a reject.” I hear her rustling papers and imagine she’s looking up at the poster of Clint Eastwood on the wall. Whenever she doesn’t know what to say, she always looks at him for guidance. I smile. She loves that man, swears she ran into him at a bar one night and they had a thing. It’s possible. She’s a beautiful woman.
“It doesn’t have to be Vanderbilt,” she says, and emotion tugs at me.
“I know.” My voice is subdued.
“Fuck a duck with a bowtie. It’s because George went there, isn’t it?”
I sigh, cringing at my father’s name. “I just want to prove I’m just as good as they are.”
“You have nothing to prove!” She exhales, obviously pulling out a smoke by the sound of the click of her lighter. “Want me to make you a cake? Or pie? You love that lemon icebox one.”
A smile ghosts over my face. Mara thinks the cure to all my ailments is sweets. She’s not far off, and I don’t blame her. Mama did the same. I cried a lot when I first moved here, a whole new world for a girl from the trailer parks of a small southern town. Kids made fun of my accent, and even the teachers didn’t know what to make of my sadness. I didn’t fit in here, and even now I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land. I chew on my lip. Perhaps that’s a tiny part of the reason I want to head back to the South for law school. Even though I don’t have any family to speak of, it’s still…home. It reminds me of Mama.
“Sugar? You there?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
My brow wrinkles as I recall reading Zack’s bio online last week where he mentioned his favorite things. An idea stirs around and takes hold, and for the first time since I woke up this morning, I’m thinking there might be a way to thank him for returning my coat.
“Hey, do you have the stuff to make a cherry pie at your place?” She lives with her longtime boyfriend Luis in a small apartment above the club. “And do you happen to have a good recipe for cherry pie?”
“Not really, honey. Cherry pie is disgusting. It’s just gloopy fruit salad mixed with some dry crust. No thanks.”
I grin. Mara is firm about her pie opinions.
She takes a hit of her cig and I hear her blowing the smoke. “I thought you liked lemon icebox. That’s the one I make better than that Pioneer Woman everyone raves about.”
“No, I do, but I know someone who likes cherry, and I was thinking maybe I might whip one up. He…I…kind of…we had this thing…and then…” My voice peters out. I can’t exactly tell her how I had hot sex with a potential future fake boyfriend.
“Bennett?” Her voice has sharpened, and I grimace. She never liked him—although I didn’t know that until we broke up and she confessed to it after a few too many glasses of wine.
“No.”
“Hmmm, and since when have you ever made a pie?”
“Never, but I thought you might want to help?” I put a pleading tone in my voice.
She sighs. “All right. The club is closed today anyway—but I’m not tasting it. That stuff is gross. Come over after class.”
I smile. “I love you.”
