How Sweet It is Read online

  SOPHIE GUNN

  NEW YORK BOSTON

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  Tay leaned in close.

  Lizzie was starting to panic, as his face seemed awfully close to hers, his eyes even more intense than usual. “You have to tell me what you want,” Lizzie repeated.

  “Is that ever even possible? Especially, Lizzie, for people like us who either don’t know what we want, or know that what we want is impossible?”

  “Nothing’s impossible,” she insisted.

  He leaned in closer.

  Or maybe she had leaned closer.

  It was impossible to know, impossible to breathe.

  Their lips touched.

  A light kiss. Still, it set Lizzie on fire. She was too shocked to move. It was more a touching than a kiss. A connection. And yet, she’d never felt anything quite so intense as this man’s lips on hers. She let her eyes flutter closed and her thoughts fell away and she felt him, his intensity a physical vibration through her just like she knew it would be…

  To all my good friends, the original Enemy Club,

  who swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and

  nothing but the truth. And then, naturally,

  break out the wine…

  CHAPTER

  1

  For over a week the envelope sat on the dining room table unnoticed, buried under a stack of birdseed catalogues and household bills like a bomb waiting to go off.

  Life went on around it. Work, grocery shopping, and housework for Lizzie Bea Carpenter. School, babysitting, and friends for her fourteen-year-old daughter, Paige.

  Tick tick tick.

  Normal life. A good life. Maybe not great, but fine. Galton, New York, centrally isolated, the locals liked to say, wasn’t exactly the kind of town where momentous things happened.

  Until Saturday, September 8, 8:22 in the evening, when Lizzie’s world turned upside down.

  “Who do we know in Geneva?” Paige asked, coming into the kitchen, holding up an envelope covered in foreign stamps. It had been Paige’s turn to clean the dining room after dinner. She’d swept the crumbs under the threadbare Turkish rug, pushed around the ragtag assortment of antique chairs until they looked more or less orderly, and tossed most of the pile of mail, including an ominous-looking letter from her middle school, into the overflowing recycling bin with a quick, guilty second glance.

  Lizzie turned off the faucet, put down the mac-and-cheese pan she was scrubbing in the sink, saw the handwriting, and said, “Ratbastard.” She backtracked quickly, her throat constricting. “I mean, Geneva? Ha! No one. Let me see that.” She grabbed for the letter, but Paige was too quick. Lizzie’s heart was pounding. Her throat was dry with dread.

  “Who?” Paige tore the letter open while dodging around the counter.

  “Don’t,” Lizzie said, but the word came out listlessly because she knew it was too late. Everything was about to change, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  “It’s addressed to both of us,” Paige said, unfolding the single sheet.

  Lizzie didn’t know that she knew anyone in all of Europe, much less Geneva, but apparently she did, because she recognized that handwriting at a glance, even after fourteen years. Her traitorous body knew it, too, and was responding as if it were still sixteen and stupid. This couldn’t be happening. Oh, Paige…

  Paige read the letter. She stopped, frozen, on the other side of the counter. “Oh. I see,” she said, letting the letter fall to the counter. “Ratbastard.” She said it as if it were an ordinary name like Steve or Joe.

  Lizzie wiped her hands on the dishrag, trying to look like a mother in control. “Well. He could have changed,” she said as carefully as she could. “We shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”

  “He wants to come here, Mom.”

  Lizzie cleared her throat. “That’s lovely,” she managed to get out.

  “On Christmas Day.”

  “Ratbastard! Sorry. Lovely. Hell.” Nice work. Lizzie needed a few minutes to pull herself together. She needed to sit and to breathe and definitely not to cry. She wanted to hit something but she couldn’t. Not now, in front of Paige. At least, not anything that would break. Not that there was much left to break in their kitchen, which was clean, but failing. Two burners were dead on the stove. The icemaker had quit eleven months ago. The radio worked when you banged it. Hard. Couldn’t do much damage in here, even if she tried.

  But that letter had done damage.

  Paige looked as if she’d already been pummeled. Her face was blank and pale. Her new black, chin-length Cleopatra haircut made her face seem rounder and her brown eyes even huger than usual. She looked like an eight-year-old and an eighteen-year-old simultaneously, a special effect in a bad after-school movie about girls growing up too fast.

  Lizzie picked up the letter. She imagined Ratbastard walking into a store and asking for the stationery that screamed I’m rich and arrogant the loudest. The cream-colored paper was heavy and stamped with a fancy watermark. The handwriting was neat, the tone straightforward. He spelled realize like a Brit, even though he had been born and bred in Michigan—I realise this is out of the blue. But I’d like to meet my daughter. I’ll be in the States over the holidays, and will stop by then. Twelve o’clock Christmas day? I hope she’ll be willing to see me. There was no return address, no phone number, no e-mail contact, nothing but a breezy signature—Ethan Pond. Then, in parentheses, Dad.

  Lizzie excused herself, climbed the stairs, turned on the water in the bathroom sink to muffle the noise, and threw up.

  Ethan Pond, Paige’s father, the boy who’d changed Lizzie’s life forever in the back of his Lexus during her senior year of high school, was coming back.

  This was a matter for the Enemy Club.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Tay Giovanni sipped his coffee, wishing he could taste it. It was 7:27 in the morning, and he was hunkered down on a stool in a chrome-and-mirrors diner in a nowhere town waiting for Candy Williams, the woman who hated him most in this vast, frozen world.

  Was this bottom?

  A hum of activity from four women at the end of the counter distracted him from his dark thoughts. The buzz grew until it exploded into shouts.

  “Ratbastard.”

  “Pondscum.”

  “Ninnyhammer.”

  “Ninnyhammer?”

  “What’s wrong with ‘ninnyhammer’?”

  “Fuckface is better.”

  “You know I won’t say that word.”

  “Face? Why not? We all have one. C’mon. Just once? For Lizzie? This is Ethan Pond we’re talking about.”

  “He’s a fartface, Liz.”

  “Oooh! She said ‘face’!”

  A wrinkled, gray-haired man on the stool next to Tay nodded to indicate the women. “That’s the Enemy Club.”

  Was the man talking to him? Tay looked around, hoping someone else was nearby.

  No such luck.

  The old man went on. “I come in Wednesday mornings just to watch them.” The man’s baseball hat read John Deere Tractors. He was missing two fingers on his right hand. These two facts combined rocked Tay’s already rocky stomach. The man lowered his voice as if telling a juicy secret. “They used to be the worst of enemies. Now they’re the best of friends. But friends with a difference. They tell each other the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth the way only natural-born enemies can. I could sell tickets!”

  Natural-born enemies.

  The words stuck in Tay’s gut. If any words described his relationship to Candy—to the world in general—those about nailed it. He wondered if the Enemy Club had openings.

  The old man elbowed Tay good-n
aturedly, then chomped into his chocolate-covered doughnut with pink sprinkles. “But now look at them. Best friends forever. Right, Lizzie Bea?”

  The waitress had come down the counter to top off their coffees. “Best enemies forever. Leave that poor man alone, Mr. Zinelli.” She poured more coffee into Tay’s mug, even though he’d barely touched it. “Ignore him.”

  One of the women stuffed a cream-colored piece of paper into a matching envelope and held it above her head. The address was handwritten, Elizabeth and Paige Carpenter, 47 Pine Tree Road. “I say we burn it.”

  The waitress hurried back down the counter. “Put that lighter away, Jill!”

  Tay tried not to watch, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Were they really enemies? They certainly didn’t look like they had anything in common, but they were completely at ease, the way they moved, touched, threatened to burn each other’s possessions.

  The old man leaned in close, pointing as he spoke. “The princess, the oddball, and the brainiac. Oh, and the waitress—she’s the good girl gone bad. All leaders of their packs back in the day. Look close, and you’ll see. They don’t look like normal friends, right?”

  Tay didn’t need a close look; it was obvious they didn’t have anything in common without a second glance.

  Jill, the woman with the lighter, was a bottle blonde, her hair pulled back in a brain-pinching bun, her earlobes dripping with diamonds. She drank from a takeout coffee cup that read Brewhaha, the hopping, trendy coffee joint across the street that Tay had gladly passed by for the quiet neglect of the diner. Friends don’t let friends bring takeout to other friends’ restaurants.

  A pixie of a woman in an orange flouncy sweater, coral beads, and short-cropped, orangish hair snatched the blonde’s lighter and slipped it into her canvas bag. Her nose was covered in orange freckles.

  “I have to go,” a third woman in itchy-looking tweed said, obviously annoyed by the other two’s jostling. She was short, her brown shoes nowhere near reaching the ground. How she’d gotten herself up on the stool, Tay couldn’t imagine. The muscles in his arms twitched, jonesing to help her down.

  He clenched his teeth until the urge passed.

  Ever since the accident, he’d been like this, possessed by the soul of a souped-up Boy Scout, needing to jump in and save the world, or at least the part in front of him. When the urge hit him, it was like an epileptic fit, unexpected and uncontrollable.

  As if a million good deeds would even out his karma.

  Not that he believed in karma.

  Or, in his case, in the possibility of even.

  Hell, he had no idea what he believed in anymore.

  “Wait, you can’t go, Georgia,” the waitress said. “Not yet.” The other women treated the waitress with deference, as if she were the leader of the group, or maybe it just seemed that way because she was standing, moving, while they sat and watched. Tendrils of wavy brown hair had escaped her bun, softly framing her round cheeks. Her waitress uniform was simple, with no necklace or earrings or any adornment to make it appear anything more than what it was. Minimal makeup, just a bit of faded color on her lips, a touch of blush on her cheeks. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…

  The blonde caught him staring at the waitress, so he trained his eyes back on his coffee. The old man had taken up with his doughnut, and the Enemy Club quieted to a low murmur. Tay tried to focus on his situation. He glanced at his watch: 7:28. Candy would be here in two minutes.

  Or not.

  The women’s conversation drifted in and out until the freckled one’s calm tone silenced the others so that Tay could hear clearly, no matter how hard he tried not to. “Lizzie, if you want something, you have to face it, admit it, then wish for it with all your soul. That’s how the universe works. It will hear your wish, and if it’s sincere, it will answer.”

  The waitress crossed her arms, leaned back against the service counter, and said, “Don’t get me started on the universe granting wishes. I love you, Nina, but that’s nuts.”

  Tay tried not to smile. He liked that waitress.

  “But if it could?” the freckled one persisted.

  “Then I wish for the perfect man.”

  Despite the blackness that was numbing him, Tay stilled, hoping to hear better.

  The blonde said, “No such thing,” and they all exploded into an uproar over the possibility of a half-decent man ever appearing in Galton, New York.

  The waitress held up her hand for silence. “The perfect man is one who’ll show up once a week, fix stuff around my house, and then split. That, O great universe, is what I wish for.”

  And they were off again. Tay looked down at his mug, trying to clear his head of waitresses and wishes. Candy would walk through those doors any second.

  … if you want something, you have to face it, admit it, then wish for it with all your soul…

  He agreed with the waitress—nuts. But he couldn’t help himself.

  He wished he wasn’t in this Podunk college town in the middle of nowhere, waiting for Candy to rip him to shreds.

  But that was a coward’s wish, so he tried again: He wished with the few pieces left of his soul that Candy would show up and take the money and then maybe, just maybe, he could taste his coffee again, feel the cold, sleep at night.

  The old man was staring intently at him, his gray eyes narrowed. Tay wondered for a sickening second if he’d said his wish out loud.

  The blonde threw her arms out and proclaimed, “I wish for the perfect man—one with good pecs!” She lowered her voice and looked right at Tay. “And beautiful green eyes.” He concentrated on the pies in the case across from him. Cherry, key lime, banana cream. There was a time when he’d have been plenty interested in a beautiful blonde dripping in diamonds eyeing him as if he was dinner, a time when he’d have been completely at home shooting the shit with a friendly old man over coffee and doughnuts. But now, he just wanted to be out of here and on his way back to Queens. This small town where everyone knew a person’s business wasn’t his kind of place. Tay could imagine what the old man would whisper about him to some stranger the next stool over. There’s that man who was in that tragic accident. The woman in the other car died, you know. He hasn’t been the same since. I come in every Wednesday just to keep an eye on him… could sell tickets…

  Seven-thirty-one. Tay watched the women joke and cajole, and despite his worry, a tiny sliver of hope snuck into his consciousness. Enemies can be forgiven, can become friends. There was a connection between the four women that mesmerized him. The freckled one touched the blonde lightly on the shoulder and secretly passed her the lighter under the counter. The tweedy one sloshed her coffee distractedly and the waitress wiped it up without a word. They all watched the waitress carefully, warily, concern evident in the way they licked their lips, pursed their mouths, caught and held one another’s eyes. They leaned in across the counter that separated them from her as if it was all they could do to keep from leaping over it and whisking her away to safety.

  Was it really possible to befriend your enemies? What did it take? Telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I am Dante Giovanni. I went through a red light and hit another car. No excuses, just a dumb accident, a distracted moment that I can never take back. A woman died. There’s no way to make it right. No way to fix it. But she left behind a daughter who needs help. I will find a way to help that girl.

  For an instant, the smell of coffee, eggs, and toast hit Tay full on.

  Then Candy walked in the door, and his senses went dry.

  CHAPTER

  3

  It was shocking to see Candy in person after carrying around her picture clipped from the paper for so many months. Not that Tay had expected that she’d be made up of a million tiny printer’s dots or still dressed in black funeral mourning. But he hadn’t expected her to look so normal in her skinny jeans and layers of tight shirts, like every other college student in the town.

  Only t
he hatred in her eyes signified otherwise.

  Candy eyed Tay as if he was the devil. Hell, she had probably only seen him in his black-and-white mug shot–like picture in the paper, too. He had come to her mother’s funeral, but he had stood in the back under an umbrella in the pouring rain, his hat pulled low. The etiquette of coming to the funeral of the stranger he’d killed escaped him. Emily Post wouldn’t go near that one with a ten-foot pole.

  Candy stiffened and marched toward him, her waist-length black hair swinging. She sat on the stool on the other side of him. The old man, fortunately, had finished up the stray crumbs of his doughnut and moved off, waving good-bye to everyone in the place.

  Candy stared straight ahead at the pies in their refrigerated case behind the counter.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  He felt her hatred crashing off the Formica, shaking the doughnuts under their glass dome, vibrating the chrome napkin holders. He figured he had about two minutes before the whole place came crashing down around him. He had known this would be hard, but he hadn’t guessed he’d feel paralyzed. He hadn’t planned to be abrupt. He had wanted to hear her story, to tell her his.

  I’m sorry. So very, very sorry…

  But he saw now that his fantasy of a connection was just that—fantasy. Forgiveness. Wishes. Enemies becoming friends. Softheaded nonsense. He nodded at the bag at his feet. “Enough to get you through school. Take it. It’s yours.” His grip tightened on his coffee mug until his fingers were white.

  Candy glanced down at the bag, her long black hair skittering off her back like a waterfall. She shook her hair back into place. “Is that what this is all about? Money? You’re such an asshole.”

  “I wish it had been me,” he said.

  “That makes two of us,” Candy said. Her ice-blue eyes met his and the effect was suffocating. Tay looked down the counter at the Enemy Club disbanding, leaving behind the waitress and her letter. She looked almost as mad as Candy, scrubbing an invisible spot on the counter with gusto. Maybe it wasn’t as easy as the old man made out to hang with your natural-born enemies.