Sugar Lane Volume 1 Read online

  Contents

  Sugar Lane Vol. 2

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE Shopping Sucks

  CHAPTER TWO Parties Suck

  CHAPTER THREE Parents Suck

  CHAPTER FOUR Fiancés Suck

  CHAPTER FIVE Sex is Amazing

  CHAPTER SIX Weddings Suck

  CHAPTER SEVEN Good Neighbors Don't Care

  CHAPTER EIGHT Vodka Rocks

  CHAPTER NINE Sisters Are The Worst

  CHAPTER TEN The Witch is Dead

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Cookies Are Delicious

  CHAPTER TWELVE Snitches Get Stiches

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Sugar Lane Vol. 2

  CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD SUGAR LANE VOL. 2

  Sugar Lane Vol. 1

  Copyright © 2018 by Harlow Hayes

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Harlow Hayes Books.

  Please respect artists’ rights. Don’t steal books, music, or videos.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and businesses, organizations, places are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For my Dad.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Shopping Sucks

  “Please wait! I have another coupon,” said the woman standing in the checkout line, rummaging through her purse. “I’m so sorry,” she said, looking back at Rhema and the ten other people that stood in line behind her.

  Rhema stood calm, but internally, she raged. The sound of the registers opening and closing was beginning to overwhelm her senses, and a pounding headache was eating at her brain. She reached into her purse and grabbed an Excedrin. Christmas was a week away, and a store trip that should have taken fifteen minutes had now become forty. She had fought her way through the aisles with her shopping cart, her list crumpled in hand. She felt the sweat dripping from her back as she hurried past the lackadaisical shoppers blocking the aisleways. Now the checkout line was backed up.

  “It’s all right. I’m in no hurry at all,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her lips. She wanted to strangle the woman. The woman should have had what she needed, out and ready to go before she got to the front of the line. They had all been standing there so long she thought she could see wrinkles forming on her hands. Rhema stared hard at the woman, taking particular notice of her pregnant belly. Four little hooligans ran around her, pulling items from the checkout shelves. One ran back and forth through the exit doors, blocking exiting shoppers.

  Rhema had seen them earlier, running and screaming up and down every aisle, terrorizing the last-minute shoppers, making demands. Rhema smiled inside, knowing that she would never be that woman, who she figured to be a halfwit. That was the only excuse for allowing her children to walk all over her. She was one of the stupid ones, letting everyone else run their lives. Rhema had made up her mind: She hated her.

  Rhema looked into her cart and saw the condensation around her tub of ice cream. It was melting, and she couldn’t stand melted ice cream.

  Take the tub and throw it at the woman’s head. The thought made her feel better while she waited. Her mind ran through the list of things she had to do. She had been roped into doing so much that now she was the stupid woman. It was the holidays, and she wondered why people thought that she didn’t have better things to do with her time. She had been pressured into helping her neighbor with her oldest daughter’s wedding and the younger one’s graduation party after getting ambushed one morning in her driveway on the way to the mailbox. Mrs. Kelly, struggling to get a rug into her car, had asked Rhema for help. Rhema had seen her struggling, but she’d hoped that her presence had gone unnoticed.

  “Rhema, I’m so glad to see you. Could you come help me with this?” Mrs. Kelly asked.

  Rhema walked over to help, but she resented her asking. Her husband, David, was the only reason she was being so nice. David had just scolded her the day before for not being friendly to the neighbors.

  “Why do you have to act so cold?” he’d asked. “I like this house and this neighborhood for Julian, and I don’t want to have to pick up and leave because you’re acting weird and can’t make any friends.”

  Rhema didn’t like him either, or that’s what she told herself anyway. I am only staying for Julian. That was what she believed. The truth was something else. Deep down, she loved David, and even on their worst days, he was the best in bed, and that was hard for Rhema to give up, so she stayed.

  “I can help the next customer here!” a cashier yelled out. Rhema was next, but a handful of people with fewer items at the end of the line beat her to it. Her face turned red as she squeezed the handle of her shopping cart, knuckles white. She was ready to ram the woman in front of her, and her children.

  “Here it is!” the woman shouted. The people in line sighed in relief.

  Rhema placed her items on the conveyor belt and took her money out of her purse. She was elated. It was finally her turn. She had stood in line so long, feet hurting in her six-inch boots and needing to pee, but it would have to wait; public restrooms weren’t appealing to her. But at least relief was coming soon. It was the only thing keeping her going. She looked up from her wallet, and her smile went back to a frown. Standing at the register was the store manager and the cashier.

  “Sorry, ma’am, we have to change out the drawers.”

  Rhema burned with anger, furious at the delay. She imagined jumping the counter and stabbing the man in the eye with her car keys.

  When she finished at checkout, she rushed to her car. Feet throbbing, she loaded the groceries, fighting the frigid cold. Her mind ran nonstop as more things were added to her to-do list. The wedding, the graduation party, and then there was Christmas, but today was Julian’s birthday, and after nine o’clock that was one thing that she could scratch off of her list. There was a moment of peace as the cold wind flickered past her face. Rhema reached into the shopping cart to grab the last bag. When she picked it up to place it in the back, she heard the ruffling rip of the plastic bag, and the container of ice cream fell out and splattered on the ground, covering her three-hundred-dollar boots in chocolate vanilla swirl.

  “Fuck!” she screamed, stomping her feet like a child as the sludge of dirty half-melted snow and ice cream splattered further up her boots. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  “Hey! Watch your mouth. My children don’t need to hear that filthy language,” a woman on the other side of the parking aisle scolded.

  Rhema turned to see a woman ushering her brood of children down the parking aisle, noses snotty and red, their bodies so layered with winter clothing they looked like miniature Michelin men.

  “I swear, the nerve of some people. Using filthy language like that in public. What a disgrace.”

  “What’s wrong with her, Mommy?” one of the smaller children asked.

  “Don’t pay her any mind, honey. Just trash.”

  She stared at Rhema with scorn, as if she were untouchable, but Rhema knew different. Everyone was touchable. People with money had a false sense of security. They believed that they could say anything to anyone and get away with numerous slights and outright disrespect toward people they believed were less than them. She was an entitled woman, just like the woman in line. They could do and say whatever they wanted because their money allowed it. Rhema remembered looking down at their rings as she shopped, their hands glistening on the cart handles. Three- and four-carat diamond rings, sparkling, screaming their status in the world. Rhema looked down at her own ring, just as large in size, but she knew that she was nothing like them.
r />   She had ice cream on her boots, and she had to pee. Rhema knew she couldn’t threaten the woman’s safety, but she could make her uncomfortable. She pulled her hands up from her sides and felt an amazing sense of power as she used her two long, slim middle fingers give the woman something that she wasn’t expecting. The woman gasped and pushed her children on toward the store, and Rhema stomped what she could of the ice cream off of her boots and got into her car.

  She sat there for a moment, collecting her bearings. Looking in the rearview mirror, she saw that she had left the shopping cart sitting behind her SUV. Another delay. She wanted to ram it into the car of the woman that reprimanded her. Reaching for the car door, she got an idea and stopped. Popping the hatch open, she grabbed her wallet, stepped out, and walked to the trunk.

  Behind the mound of groceries was David’s hunting bag. Rhema reached over the shopping bags and grabbed it. As she unzipped it, her body tingled with excitement. She reached in, grabbing the large Buck hunting knife that rested at the bottom. She slipped the knife in her boot and closed the hatch, gripping the shopping cart and her wallet. She walked over to the cart return, right next to the car of the reprimander. Rhema pushed the cart into the crammed space and walked closer to the woman’s 2016 Range Rover. She fumbled with her Gucci wallet in her hand and let it fall into the greasy slushlike snow.

  Rhema looked around to make sure there were no eyes on her. She bent down to pick it up, and once she was down and out of view, she slid the Buck knife out of her boot, removed it from its sleeve, and stabbed it into the back driver’s side tire. As the air slowly deflated, a smile stretched across Rhema’s face. She placed the knife back in its sleeve and stuffed it back into her boot before standing. She wiped the water from her wallet, walked back to her car, and drove home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Parties Suck

  Rhema stood at the sink washing dishes, her hands trembling under the water. A spider descended from the ceiling, dancing in front of her. She reached for her hand towel and swatted at it. Relief swept over her body when she saw the spider crushed, guts now woven into the fabric of the towel. She threw the towel in the waste bin and resumed washing dishes. She wished she could do the same to her house guests. Most of them she hadn’t invited anyway— that was David’s doing. The only thing she could think of now was how dirty the carpet was going to be once the party was over. The heavy snow was melting, but this particular winter was harsh, and it wasn’t officially winter yet. If she could, she would have kicked Old Man Winter in the balls.

  The house that she shared with her husband was everything she had ever wanted. It had four spacious bedrooms, a loft, a large kitchen, stainless-steel and marble countertops included, and a massive master bedroom with a private bath that housed a giant garden tub. There was a stunning saltwater pool in the back constructed out of multicolored stones and plenty of yard left over for Julian to play in.

  Rhema had the place decked out in traditional decor with a touch of modern. Much of the decor had been purchased on their vacations. Before Julian was born, that’s what they did, they traveled. David was a top executive specializing in surgical device sales, and he traveled across the world training the employees on the product and how to sell it. It was good money. That was the only thing that Rhema had cared about at the time. He made good money and treated her well. So whether it was for work or not, when they traveled, she shopped.

  Heavy satin drapes from Paris hung on the windows, the Italian sheets had a thread count of one thousand or more. The vase that sat at the end of the mantel was from Tokyo. They ate at the dinner table every night like a family should, and Julian had the newest and best of everything a nine-year-old boy could want. She put in a lot of work to make her house a home, and she didn’t hesitate to let people know it.

  The sound of the kids screaming and storming through the house had her nerves on edge. She knew that her furniture would be laden with sticky fingerprints and dirt smudges, Kool-Aid spills, and cake crumbs. Rhema didn’t like children. She’d never really wanted one, but accidents happen and nine years ago this day, she’d given birth to Julian. He had been the light of her life ever since. She didn’t enjoy entertaining as much as she thought she would, but she still enjoyed being a housewife.

  However, David had been pressuring her to go back to work for the past two years. David had cut back a lot of his travel time in order to be home more, and because of that, there wasn’t as much money coming in as there used to be. David still did well, but it wasn’t the money that Rhema wanted, so David was going to have to figure it out because she had no intention of going back to work anytime soon. She had been a nurse and didn’t want to go back to the hospital. Sick people bothered her. She tired of them complaining about their health, tired of dealing with overbearing spouses or children, she tired of them not ever knowing what medications they were taking or taking more than any living human being should. Rhema had a belief: If a patient needed to be on more than seven medications, they needed to be taken out back and shot.

  The only reason she’d entered the profession was to meet a potential husband, a cardiologist, neurologist, or any other ologist that made more than four hundred grand a year, but she ended up meeting David instead. He made a little less than the ologists, but he was attractive and funny, and more importantly single, so she figured she could sacrifice a hundred grand for someone with actual sex appeal.

  David came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his chin into her shoulder. The smell of beer was on his breath, and Rhema could feel what he wanted on her backside. She dropped the glass in the sink and turned to face him. His fingertips moved up the back of her shirt, tickling her bare skin. She wrapped her arms around his neck and took a deep breath. She had never turned him down, but tonight she thought she might have to. There was still a laundry list of things to get done before Christmas, and she still had to help Mrs. Kelly with that wedding and stupid graduation party.

  “I’m sorry, David. I can’t, not now. Maybe later,” she said.

  She smiled at him, still holding out hope. She had never let anything come between her and sex. Not now, not ever.

  He looked her in the eyes, then leaned in to kiss her on her cheek. She turned back around and resumed washing the dishes. He gave her a playful smack on the behind then walked off.

  She was going to kill Mrs. Kelly. She didn’t like her or her two daughters and felt like a victim of societal expectation. Friendly neighbors helped each other. Like most people, she was expected to be the model neighbor, nothing like her actual self. If anything, she was the anti-model, but she had to try hard to keep it under wraps. It was because of her that they’d had to leave the last house, the last neighbor. And the time before that. Rhema was tired of moving.

  Rhema walked into the living room, and noise filled her ears as some teeny-bopper music pierced the air. Her cocktail table was full of empty red Solo cups and paper plates with half-eaten pieces of cake. She looked at it in disgust, as if she could see the germs crawling all over it. She walked over to one of the chairs across from the sofa and sat down.

  Across from her was the older Kelly daughter, and to her left was Mrs. Kelly, carrying on a conversation with Maggie and her husband, Luke. They were an all-right couple from what Rhema could tell. They had a daughter around Julian’s age and two other toddlers, both boys. Their faces did nothing to hide their disinterest, but Mrs. Kelly continued on, unfazed. Rhema wondered if she should say something to break up the monotony but decided against it. If she started a conversation with Mrs. Kelly, she would never escape her, so she directed her eyes toward the oldest daughter.

  The girl was a frump. Rhema saw her leave every morning in her apron with the big tree logo on it, headed to one of those fancy health-food stores that seemed to have taken over the area. It was obvious that she was a disappointment of the family. She had no charm, no charisma. Rhema wouldn’t have even noticed she was alive if it weren’t for her stuffi
ng bites of cake in her mouth. Looking from the outside in, you could see that they didn’t hug her or talk to her with any type of affection, but the younger one, she was pretty and consumed Mr. and Mrs. Kelly’s every conversation. Life would be easy for her, Rhema surmised. She had gone off to school and already had a law-school boyfriend. She was on her way to having the picture-perfect life. She was the prized pony, the loved child.

  Ten minutes had passed, and Mrs. Kelly was still talking. She kept going on and on about the younger one, and Rhema wished that she would start choking on her cake. Mrs. Kelly was nice when she was talking about her daughter Hannah, but in general conversation she was a know-it-all. A woman with little patience and curt in most communication.

  “Oh, Hannah has done so well. I am so proud of her” and “Oh, Hannah hasn’t decided yet, but she thinks that medical school would be a good option, but she really has knack for business.”

  “Oh, Mom, stop. You’re embarrassing me,” Hannah said, walking over with a smile on her face.

  She had a long stride and long blonde hair and beautiful white teeth. Her eyes were crystal blue, beautiful in most people’s eyes, but her face was so made up she looked like some cheap homecoming queen.

  “I’m definitely leaning more toward medical school. I just feel the need to help people, you know?” She gave her mother a cheap hug, leaning over the love seat, and Mrs. Kelly’s face lit up with joy. She turned around and walked back over to the other side of the room to resume her conversation with the man she had been speaking with. Rhema didn’t recognize him either.

  Rhema sighed in frustration. She didn’t even know who was in her own home. Tired of listening, she looked at Mrs. Kelly’s other daughter, her eyes focusing on her frumpy sweater and unflattering blue jeans. It was obvious that she tried to look nice, but it was also obvious that she didn’t know what she was doing. Rhema wanted to say something but stopped herself. She couldn’t remember her name. She knew it sounded like a character from that kid movie about the ice princess that Julian made her watch all of the time, but it stayed buried in all of the clutter of her mind.