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“How long, Eugene?”
“How long what?” He frowned, reaching for a towel and quickly wrapping it around his waist. As if that would hide the erection he was still sporting.
Stepping further into the bathroom, I asked again, “Don’t play this off, Eugene. What the hell was that in the shower?”
Ignoring me, Eugene quickly moved past me.
Following, I pleaded, “Eugene, talk to me. I’m your best friend. We tell each other everything.”
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t.”
That stopped me in my tracks.
Did he really just say that? For as long as I can remember, Eugene had always been my most trusted confidant. He knew everything about me. The good and all the bad. He never judged and was there for me anytime I needed him to be.
“You don’t want to be my friend anymore?” I whispered, silently praying he didn’t mean what he said. I didn’t know what I would do without Eugene in my life. I loved him as much as my parents and sons. It would devastate me to never see him again.
Leaning against his dresser, he hung his head. “I’m sorry, Shug.”
“Don’t be sorry. I just don’t understand.”
“It’s nothing. Can we just forget about it? Please.”
Carefully walking over to him, I stood before him and took a real good look at the man who had been my best friend since childhood. To me, he was still the same goofy, lovable, honest-to-a-fault, Eugene. But there was something more. Something else I’d never seen before in his eyes, and when the realization hit me, my eyes widened as I took a step back, slowly shaking my head. “No.”
“I’ve been in love with you since kindergarten, Shug.”
No.
I had to have heard him incorrectly. He couldn’t be in love with me. I was Sugar Potter. I knew what people thought of me. Victim, loose, wanton and my favorite… a jezebel, sent to tempt decent men.
I’ve heard it all.
It all started when I was a senior in high school, when one of the popular girls saw me at the lake. You know, the pretty cheerleader type who thinks she’s better than everyone because her shit doesn’t stink. Well, she may have seen me at the lake with someone. Because all I knew was that by morning, my indiscretion was the talk of the gossip line; whatever reputation I had, she obliterated in an instant, and afterwards I became just the whore of Rosewood.
It was a reputation that I still fought against today. It didn’t matter if I was a store owner, went to church, tried to raise my boys as decent young men. I would always be the town whore.
Want a good time? Call Sugar.
Need to shoot off steam. Call Sugar.
Want to cheat on your girlfriend, wife, significant other? Call Sugar.
I stupidly thought after I married John, everyone in town would move past my failings, but that didn’t happen. Not when I married the son of one of Rosewood’s wealthiest families. That alone caused a big uproar. In the beginning, John stood beside me. He didn’t care what anyone said. I should have known he was rebelling against his parents.
Then I found out I was pregnant with Benjamin.
That’s when he showed his true colors.
John had enough of the rumors, snide comments, and speculation. That’s when the mental abuse started. At first, I chalked it up to him being tired and over-worked. But by the time Benjamin was born, John, along with his family, demanded a paternity test.
That’s when everything changed.
While the paternity test conclusively stated that John Stanley was Benjamin’s father, he flat-out refused to sign his name to the birth certificate, stating he didn’t want his name associated with a whore.
After that, my marriage went downhill fast. John’s mental and psychological abuse graduated to physical abuse, and after one particularly nasty drunken haze, I found myself pregnant again.
I couldn’t take it anymore and filed for divorce.
