Page 1 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)

SHANA

I kid you not, it was ten inches long.” Lemon holds up her forearm for reference. “Tell me how I was supposed to say no to the tour bus after that.”

Devyn fans herself, eyes hinting at approval as she sips a caramel macchiato in my usual booth at Sugar Stable, the local milkshake bar and only coffee spot in Pine Forest.

I sip my drink too, a root beer float, because coffee is the nastiest thing I’ve ever tasted next to tea and alcohol. I don’t get how my friends can enjoy this stuff. Then again, I don’t really understand most of their choices.

My long curls hang in front of my face like a shield, my cloak of darkness to hide the crimson blush spreading across my cheeks as my friends contemplate which other items might be longer than this rockstar’s… penis .

Devyn nudges me. “You okay, Shay?”

We’ve been coming to Sugar Stable weekly since she moved back to Pine Forest and started her pageant program.

My best friend is a former Miss American Rodeo Queen.

Naturally, the news of her very own program starting in our little rodeo town spread like wildfire over the past month.

So many dancers from my studio wanted to participate that I somehow got roped into board membership.

And I get it, pageantry and dance go hand in hand, but the glitter, the glitz, the sheer amount of pink .

Those are not my vibes.

I’m an athlete. I teach competitive gymnasts how to soar through the air and stick their landings, not how to strut down a runway or talk in front of a crowd.

I don’t even want to speak in private. That’s the beauty of dance. Nobody expects you to be verbal.

It’s not that I don’t like being a part of the pageant board. I do. I love spending time with my friends. But we all know the real reason I’m here is so I won’t be there.

Only, it’s not great escapism today. While we’re supposed to be discussing costumes and fundraising, somehow we’ve diverted to the male anatomy and its relation to our friend Lemon’s latest one-and-done.

I sigh, blowing hair strands in front of my face as I contemplate why it bothers me that she’s so vocal about her sexuality.

It’s not like Lemon isn’t a grown woman. She’s allowed to have trysts.

But how is everyone so open to all of this?

One minute you’re a teenager, and it’s taboo to show your bra strap, and the next thing you know, you’re twenty-eight and everyone is a closet porn star.

“Am I the only one who doesn’t want forearm sex?”

“You said that out loud.”

Devyn shares a quick look with Lemon that says maybe they should finish their big girl conversation another time, and I can’t stand to meet their eyes.

They’re looking at me like…

“You feel sorry for me . ”

Lemon’s brow pinches, but she doesn’t deny it.

“I’m the weirdo. Aren’t I?”

I push my drink away and pull my knees against my chest. My free hand, seemingly sentient, whips up and tightens the hoodie strings around my face until only my nose and mouth are visible.

“ Shana .” Dev pries my hands away and loosens the fabric. “There, that’s better.”

“Shana’s not here,” I mumble. “She’s joined the convent with her erogenous equals.”

Her green eyes meet mine, familiar in ways I can’t explain… safe . And she can see from that one look alone, the unsettling effect intimacy still has on me.

Sheltered Shana, her eyes seem to say. Not mocking, simply remembering alongside me.

She squeezes my hand. “I haven’t been around, and I’m sorry. I was so focused on my own problems I didn’t know what you were dealing with. I didn’t even ask, I—”

“Stop.” I pull my hand back to my lap, noting the way her features pinch as I do. It hurts me to hurt her, but these thoughts in my head are too much to explain in two or three coffee sessions. “We don’t have to do this now. I’m just glad you’re back.”

She exhales, offering a smile instead. I missed that smile so much when she left, and it’s hard to ignore the way it feels letting her back in, pulling out a dull knife from a hardened wound.

“I know we have a lot to catch up on,” she says with her signature eye roll, “but not that much has changed. I don’t want to have sex with a forearm, either, just so we’re clear.”

“Well, neither did I!” Lemon slaps down her menu. “I simply wanted his junk to be the size of one. Much more sanitary than an arm any day.” She winks.

A giggle slips from my lips, and I lower my hood, grateful for friends so understanding of my… innocence.

“Do you feel better knowing Lemon is the only ho of the group? I’m a married woman, remember?” Devyn plucks the cherry from Lemon’s sundae and pops it into her mouth.

“You cherry taker!” Lem folds her arms over her chest.

Laughter surrounds me, friends and bodies and sounds…but suddenly, the only thing I can focus on is who I see when I turn my head.

The heat my body creates with that single connection could melt every dessert on this table in an instant.

Green eyes familiar in ways I can’t explain.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.” Lemon nudges me out of the spell. “We all experience things at different times and levels.” She drones on, assuring me I’m not the odd woman out, while I’m fairly certain I am the only twenty-eight-year-old virgin ever.

When I moved back in with Dad, he needed me.

I squeeze Lemon’s hand so she knows we’re okay. We may be on completely opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of intimacy experience, but she’s one hell of a friend, working with Dad for over a year now. The home health team she’s employed with takes care of him around the clock.

The retirement he won’t live to take is paying for it.

And truthfully, I’m not needed at home when they’re around to care for him. His needs have gone beyond that of a family caretaker. They’re clinical.

Terminal. Terminal. Terminal.

I’m just watching him wilt and crumble in a forgotten corner, empty promises of get-well bouquets, shoved to the side and left to die.

It’s become second nature to pray, plead that he’ll have a good enough day to sit up and talk, silently bargaining with God for just a little more time with the only family I have. Another day to see him crinkle the edges of his eyes when he rattles lines of Shakespeare.

Another day he’s alive inside and out.

Lately, there have been fewer good days.

“ You can’t be alone forever, Shaker. Promise me you will seek connection outside of dance.”

“What’s the point?” I say. “Look at you…And Mom? People die. And the ones who don’t just walk away. Devyn left for a decade because of love!” I shake my head. “I’d rather be alone than set myself up to be broken.”

“Cowards die many times before their deaths .” He places Mom’s ring in my palm and closes my fist. “The valiant only taste of death but once.”

That was over three weeks ago.

The last good day.

So, what’s my excuse? Even Dad’s telling me to put myself out there and meet someone, in more or less Victorian words.

I don’t mean to be a virgin, I just am. How do you explain that to other adults?

I was a very focused teenager and an even more determined college student. I was worried about one thing and one thing only: perfecting my craft.

I didn’t have time for sex .

And now I’m so far behind that anyone I meet is going to expect I have at least some idea how to do things that I have exactly no idea, what-so-ever, how to do.

Do you do sex? Or have it?

I don’t even know.

It doesn’t help that Lemon is going further into this the longer we sit. I appreciate it, but it’s not exactly helping to hear about her perceived lesser sexual experiences. It’s just revealing how very few things I know.

What even is a cock ring?

“It’s fine!” I say as she starts on about her first time giving oral. I do not need to hear that.

Or maybe I do.

My friends look at me expectantly, like they want me to tell them more of my feelings, but I don’t share those. Assigning words to the way my heart beats, or brain fixates, or my chest rises and falls—it’s never made sense to me.

So I dance, and my body filters emotions to something tangible. The music shapes them to meaning.

Perhaps it’s why dance is all I’ve ever wanted.

In my darkest childhood hours, I used to think it’s all I’d ever need.

But children grow. They dance and they learn and they leave. And when the studio closes and they take their sparkling tulle and giggles home with them, I go home too. And there aren’t friends or fun, and certainly no forearms waiting for me there.

There’s the only family I have left.

Dying.

Lemon smiles up from her phone. “I’m gonna bug Jeremy at Cowboy’s Paradise while it’s still happy hour. Wanna come?”

“Sounds fun!” Dev stacks our used cups in a pile for the man bussing tables. The man my eyes can’t stop searching any time I step foot in this milkshake bar.

Lemon follows my focus. “You’re totally staring at Dustin.”

“What?!” I flick my eyes to Dev and mime a zip-it to Lem.

Devyn cannot know.

She’s just returned home.

Ten years without my best friend, and she’s finally back. I can’t risk ruining the rebuild of our friendship when I’m already on the verge of losing Dad.

“I am not staring ,” I whisper.

Was I?

Shoot!

“You guys have fun,” I say. “I’m gonna stay here and put together a recital schedule. Same time Sunday?

“It’s October,” Devyn deadpans. “And recital isn’t ‘till Christmas, Shay. Come with us! You might meet the perfect forearm for all you know.”

“You did not just say that.” I shake my head. “There are no forearms in this town that I haven’t known since kindergarten. You should understand that better than anyone.”

Lemon snorts at my jab, Devyn having become mighty comfortable with her high school sweetheart since moving back home. She doesn’t try to hide the smile emerging at the mention of her childhood crush.

It must be nice.

“Come with us, Shay! Jeremy’s gonna be mad you didn’t want to see him.”

“Well, good thing I’ll see Jeremy at barre class in the morning. Unlike you divas, he wakes up at a normal hour and makes it on time.”

Dev studies my face. “I know you have a lot going on, but that’s exactly why you need to let loose. Meet someone who makes you smile. You don’t have to hide in your hoodie all alone, Shay.”

I bristle at the topic. I hate when people bring it up, even if I appreciate that they do.

It’s complicated.

Everyone knows my dad is in his last few months, just living at home. Waiting to die— that single thought, a leech always feeding off my mind.

And they all feel sorry for me.

I don’t even blame them. I feel sorry for me.

Shana Holiday, the last of her kind.

Like a young adult, dystopian novel where I find out I have hidden powers, or a fated mate, or some duty and calling to save all of mankind how my ancestors always planned.

Then at least there would be a reason for my fate.

For the solitude I face.

But there’s not.

It’s just Shana Holiday, the last of her kind .

Even my friends can sense my impending doom. So, meeting someone right now? A relationship? Someone that makes me smile , as Devyn put it…that’s just not in my cards.

This is reality. My dad is dying, I am a strange, emotionally stunted ballerina who only feels in song and loves in movement, and things like smiling someones and love … that’s another person’s story. Not mine.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell her, noting the feeling of disappointment with the downward turn of her frown, and the guilt that indicates I put it there.

She stops by the door, hugging her brother before turning away.

Something I should have done before he saw me.

And when his eyes meet mine from across the room, I feel something that has me scooping my laptop into my bag and darting from the Sugar Stable to my studio, as fast as my legs will allow.

Because I can’t un-feel it any more than I could all those years ago.

Dustin Campbell makes my heart dance.