Dipping a Toe in Sugar Read online

  Dipping a Toe in Sugar

  A Taste of Sugar Romance

  Rocklyn Ryder

  Copyright © 2019 Rocklyn Ryder

  All rights reserved worldwide

  No part of this book may be reproduced, uploaded to the Internet, or copied without permission from the author. The author respectfully asks that you please support artistic expression and help promote anti-piracy efforts by purchasing a copy of this book at the authorized online outlets.

  This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences only. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.

  Want to connect with Rocklyn?

  Sign up for her newsletter or visit www.rocklynryder.com

  for exclusive sneak peeks at new projects, cover reveals, and general shenanigans.

  Dipping a Toe in Sugar

  A Taste of Sugar Romance

  by

  Rocklyn Ryder

  Paula

  I'm 34 years old.

  How did I get here?

  It's all I can think as I stare at the walls.

  It's a part time job at minimum wage. It's not enough to put a real roof over my head-- not that my credit score is high enough to qualify for a place of my own anyway-- but it keeps gas in the tank and I can finally afford groceries.

  A year ago I would have walked off this job.

  Hell, a year ago I never thought I'd be in a position to need this job. Let alone that I'd be so grateful for it that I'd be standing here with a garden hose and a bottle of bleach, swallowing my pride and holding my nose as I prepare to clean human feces off the walls of a gas station bathroom.

  How the fuck did I get here?

  Luckily the bathrooms are in an separate building on the far side of the parking lot. The whole place is designed so I can just open up the hose and squirt the walls down. By the time I get to scrubbing the walls with bleach, the worst part of the job is over.

  And at least it gets me out of the store and away from the register; away from the customers, away from my catty co-workers, and away from the boss.

  Like I said, I never would have guessed life would ever deal me a blow so hard that I'd be grateful to be out here cleaning this mess up for $8.25 an hour.

  Opening the spray nozzle on the hose to full blast, I let lose with the high pressure spray and do my best to avoid any back splash.

  Staying out of the way of my own thoughts isn't as easy.

  A year ago I had everything. I lived in a small but beautiful home in a nice neighborhood. I had my own bakery on a busy corner of our downtown district that was just starting to run in the black after three years of hard work. I drove a perfectly acceptable mid-sized sedan and I was wearing a diamond ring that wasn't going to get any attention at the country club but I wasn't a member of the country club anyway.

  I didn't care that the house was a bedroom shy of being "boojie" enough to compete with the soccer mom crowd. I didn't care that my Toyota didn't give me the street cred that the BMW that belonged to the real estate agent next to the bakery had. I didn't care that the simple gold band with the quarter carat diamond wasn't the jewel-encrusted platinum band with the showy center stone that I had lusted for since high school.

  I cared that life was good and I was happy and Brad was going to marry me...someday.

  A year ago my life was good enough that it didn't bother me that the house that Brad and I bought together after our third anniversary was entirely in his name. Even though we'd discussed it prior to getting qualified for the loan and agreed to put the mortgage in both names.

  Some how, that's not how it went down.

  I knew I had no income to speak of with the new business in its first year. It's not like we were going to qualify for a bigger loan by running my credit too. And my credit cards were all maxed out, partially due to me being the one responsible for all our meals out and date night activities because Brad felt it was fair of me to cover the "fun" stuff while he took care of the rent.

  At the time, that made sense to me too. We'd just moved in together, Brad made more money than I did and we didn't eat out much. It was supposed to be a deal in my favor while I got on my feet, paid off my car, and worked to save some money for the bakery that was still in the planning stage at that point.

  It wasn't supposed to be a permanent arrangement, we were supposed to reassess the division of financial responsibilities after a year or so.

  Instead, as my finances stabilized with a raise and a paid off car loan, Brad started delegating more and more "fun" expenses to me...and my credit cards.

  At first that was fine. Rent for our old house was still more than we spent on dinners and movies and I had no problem keeping on top of my credit card payments and still putting away a little in savings every month.

  But then I got laid off unexpectedly. Unemployment took 3 months to kick in and it was only 60% of what I'd been making at the office anyway.

  Savings got eaten up by my share of the household bills; utilities and cable and stuff that still had to get paid whether I was working or not.

  Brad was supportive when I decided to make the bakery plan a reality.

  I maxed out a new credit card on the equipment and my credit score fell so I couldn't get the commercial space leased in my name alone.

  Brad came to my rescue. He believed in paying cash for everything he could but he understood the importance of the almighty FICO score. He had one credit card with a low balance and a high limit and a 745 credit score.

  The property owner of my new bakery location gave me a good deal on my first year of rent-- as long as Brad's name was the primary on the lease.

  By the time we bought the house, Brad's debt to income ratio was a dream and mine was a nightmare. Still, we'd agreed that we'd talk to the loan officer about both our credit and put the house in both our names as long as my lower credit score didn't put us in a higher interest rate.

  It was an FHA loan with a guaranteed rate. My credit wasn't great, but it was at a qualifying level at the time.

  Brad just didn't follow through with our plan.

  It was one of those cute little disagreements that all couples have. The one bee in my bonnet that I always came back on whenever we got into an argument.

  Which wasn't very often.

  Like I said-- life was pretty good.

  He always said it wouldn't matter after we got married anyway.

  So I worked my ass off to make the bakery successful, came home and stayed up till 11 o'clock every night with Brad because he said he never got to see me since I left the house at 3:30 every morning-- every morning-- to start baking for the day, and planned our wedding in the nooks and crannies between everything else I had to get done every day.

  And then one day...

  The bathroom walls are as clean as they'll get with just the hose. Which is surprisingly pretty clean-- looking. So I pour bleach into the mop bucket, check my gloves, and start scrubbing.

  Then one day Brad came to meet me for lunch.

  It was a Tuesday.

  He took me to the little sandwich shop 2 doors down from the bakery. Which was weird because he always complained that they were way too expensive for sandwiches and they didn't give free refills on their fountain sodas.

  But there I sat, listening to him talk nonsense while we waited for our number to be called.

  I kept hearing him saying he'd put all my things in a unit but it didn't make sense
to me.

  The girl from the kitchen delivered our order on a tray and took the number 29 off our table without speaking to us.

  I watched her walk away, wondering if she knew something I didn't.

  Finally it hit me; Brad was breaking up with me.

  He'd taken the day off to sort through our things and separate them into his and hers piles. He took the hers pile to a storage place for me to pick up when I found a place of my own.

  That was what the little pad-lock key was for that he handed me before he left the sandwich place.

  He actually asked for my house key.

  He didn't think there was any reason for me to come back to the house.

  He said that!

  "I don't really think there's any reason you need to come by the house, I'm pretty sure I got everything."

  He even left the bill for lunch for me to pay.

  Of course, I did go back to the house one more time. Not that night. That night I slept in the small office I had at the bakery. On the floor, under a giant beach towel that I had in the trunk of my car. Too numb to process what had happened and too ashamed to tell a soul.

  Maybe it was a misunderstanding and we'd work everything out before anyone found out. Then we could go on like nothing ever happened.

  Of course, that turned out to be beyond wishful thinking.

  He threw six years of my life in the gutter without a warning. I never saw it coming.

  Just like I never saw the new girlfriend coming. The woman he moved into our house less than a week after he moved me out. I guess he needed to make room for her shit.

  It took me 2 days to tell anyone what had happened. It was the lady who worked at the storage place who had to endure my tale of woe and confusion.

  She listened patiently and clucked sympathetically at all the appropriate spots in my story.

  She told me she thought I'd passed away from the way Brad talked when he rented the space.

  Rat bastard couldn't even tell a total stranger what an asshole he was.

  Just dumped everything I had in the house into a 5 foot by 10 foot storage unit. Didn't even pay the bill for a full year or even 6 months-- Cheryl, the storage manager, was sure to remind me that $75 would be due on the first of the month.

  At least he put the storage unit in my name.

  I slept in my office for 2 weeks.

  The bakery was just beginning to make a profit but my credit was still pretty dismal. I couldn't find an apartment that would lease to me without a co-signer and I didn't have anyone who I could ask to co-sign for me.

  My only real friend in town offered to let me crash in her son's bedroom for "as long as I needed it" but considering that she has 3 children under the age of 10, I'm pretty sure "as long as I need it" roughly translated to a week-- 2 if I really couldn't find anywhere else.

  Turns out-- all my friends were Brad's friends.

  Maybe they all thought Brad was an incredible idiot for breaking up with me and maybe they all thought he was an incredible asshole for the way he did it, but if they did, none of them bothered hitting me up to let me know.

  I was at my wit's end, seriously watching YouTube channels dedicated to urban survival, talking about how to live in your car and still hold down a grownup job on a budget of only a couple hundred dollars a month.

  I could afford a couple hundred dollars a month. As long as it wasn't a couple hundred dollars more a month.

  Luckily--

  I snort sarcastically at the bathroom wall as the word forms in my mind--

  Luckily-- my dilemma of how I was going to manage to find a place to live so I could keep the bakery open took care of itself just as easily as how I managed to move out of my house without Brad having to buy out my half.

  Brad wanted his name off the bakery lease.

  My landlord was willing to rewrite it into my name only, but it meant a rent increase of several hundred dollars a month and an additional security deposit seeing as how my credit wasn't the best.

  I couldn't afford it.

  I scraped together enough money to consult an attorney, hoping that Brad was stuck in the lease for the full term and by that time I should have no problem taking over on my own.

  The goods news was-- Yes, He was stuck in the lease. However, he was not stuck with letting me sublet from him.

  I was assured I had a viable lawsuit but I was also informed that the way it was likely to go down was that we'd both end up retaining attorneys. Our attorneys would write a lot of letters back and forth and, in the end, I had a very good chance of getting to keep my bakery.

  The bad news was-- I'd have to retain an attorney.

  Meanwhile word was getting around about our break up. It's not a big city, people know people and gossip travels fast.

  Which presented yet more problems-- gossip.

  Gossip that I'd been cheating. Gossip that I was frigid. Gossip that I was a lesbian. Gossip that I was cheating with a frigid lesbian.

  Not a single person who walked into my business asking "is it true?" presented me with any version of the story that involved my fiance moving me out of his house while I was at work and then breaking up with me over a $12.00 tuna sandwich that he made me pay for.

  To say my mental state was precarious is an understatement.

  I went back to the house for my cookware. The fancy French stuff that he'd given me every year for anniversary presents. I figured I deserved it.

  That's when I met the girl he replaced me with, a doe-eyed, brunette that was barely old enough to buy alcohol. She smiled sweetly and shook my hand and sat in the living room while Brad helped me carry the heavy, enameled cast-iron skillets to my car.

  They both acted like nothing was unusual about the situation at all. Business as usual.

  And, speaking of business, just before I put my car in gear, ready to say goodbye to what was supposed to be my house forever, Brad tapped on the driver's side window.

  I don't know what I was expecting. An apology maybe? Some lingering sign that the decent man I'd fallen in love with was still in there somewhere? Just an acknowledgment that this was an epic dick move and he knew it?

  Instead, he handed me an envelope and told me to respond by the end of the week.

  I still remember sitting on Austin's twin size bed, on top of the Star Wars bedspread, reading the proposal by the light of a lamp shaped like a robot.

  He was offering to buy my business in order to solve the lease problem. It was a tempting chunk of cash, but it meant losing my bakery in the process.

  After talking it over with my last friend on earth, I accepted the offer.

  OK, maybe Austin wanted his room back. Maybe Lana wanted her family's routine back. Maybe she really gave me the best advice available, I mean, there wasn't a lot of other options on the table for me and at least this way I walked away with 15 grand in my pocket.

  The bathroom is spotless. It's clean enough to do surgery in here and I'm woozy from the bleach vapors.

  I wring out the mop and dunk it again, giving the tile floor one more going over.

  It's hard to believe it only took a year to go from on top of the world to rock fucking bottom, but here I am.

  The first thing I did wrong was try to be responsible by paying off debt. But a few thousand dollars doesn't go very far when you're throwing it into a several thousand dollar hole.

  The second thing I did wrong was...

  Everything.

  I sigh. Wiping the sweat off my brow with the back of my vinyl-gloved hand and instantly regretting it. Dirty bleach water mixes with sweat and rolls into my eye.

  The wooden handle of the industrial mop clacks loudly on the tile floor as I let it drop so I can yank off the gloves and wash out my eye in the sink.

  Thank God this place is already disinfected to hell and back, I think as I hit the stupid push button thing on the sink faucet. Water runs for about 20 seconds before the faucet thing returns to the off position and I have to press it down agai
n. Four times to be exact, before I've managed to douse enough water into my eye that it no longer feels like a trip the emergency room that I can't afford.

  Everything.

  The money didn't last as long as I'd hoped and 2 months ago I found myself here. In a town far from home, crashing in my aunt's garage on a cot I bought online with some of the last of my money.

  Aunt Stacy is a hoarder.

  Yeah, like the ones on that show.

  She lives in a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house in a nice suburb of Las Vegas. She used to work in the casino business. She retired about 10 years ago and now she rarely leaves the house.

  She lives alone, but there is seriously no room inside the house for me.

  So I spent the last of the money I had in the bank to get a bed, a refrigerator and microwave, and put in a window air conditioner in the little room she had built in her 3 car garage for a ceramics studio-- back when she went through her ceramics phase.

  I share the space with a pottery wheel that hasn't seen action since the 80s and 2 buckets of dried cement that were once slip clay.

  I have access to the downstairs bathroom, but I try to stay out of the house as much as possible.

  I know Aunt Stacy is happy to have me around and she's always reminding me that I can come in and watch TV or use the kitchen whenever I want to but...

  The kitchen is a dead zone to me. I won't even look in there, let alone cook in there or eat anything that came out of there. And TV means sitting upstairs in Stacy's bedroom on the corner of her bed while she sits in her recliner and talks non-stop about political conspiracies.

  It's the only spot in the house you can sit. And even then, sitting on Stacy's bed means moving stacks of magazines and junk mail she says she's "getting to" in order to make a spot for myself because Aunt Stacy just sleeps in her rocking recliner now. She says it's better on her back, but I suspect it's just easier than clearing off her bed.