A LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR Read Online Free PDF Page A

much to split rent between us four ways.”
     
    “I don’t know. I mean it would be great and all, but I haven’t even started looking for another job yet. And I can tell you right now I’m not working any more hours at the restaurant than I already am. It only adds to my dad’s expectations.”
     
    Give me a kitchen and let me bake desserts. That I could do all day, but waiting tables and cooking Italian dishes got old real fast.
     
    “Come on, Gina,” Carlina pleaded. “It’s not the same without you. You know we’ve always done everything together.”
     
    “Maybe after I find another job─”
     
    “If you wait, you won’t do it,” Alisa said. “Look at my sister.”
     
    Her sister, Gianna, had blown college off altogether and stayed at home, intending to save up enough money to get a place of her own. Only the money came and went. Gianna was a shopoholic, and now at twenty-four-years-old she was still living at home with her parents.
     
    I sighed. I didn’t want that to be me. No way. No how. And it would be so much fun to share a place with my best friends. “I’ll think about it.”
     
    “Perfect,” Mia said. “Be sure and swing by to see where you’re going to be living soon.”
     
    “Mia─”
     
    “She’s in,” she told Carlina and Alisa, and she was right. I didn’t want to be left out. We’d always done everything together and I didn’t want to be the one to break the tradition. Besides, I was an adult now. It was time I moved out of my parent’s house and paid my own way in life.
     
    “I just hope I get...” My gaze shifted upward, my words interrupted by the toy airplane being dangled over my head in front of me. Taped on top of it was a tiny plastic pig. I glanced back over my shoulder to see Anthony standing there, a huge grin on his face.
     
    “Seems you owe me a date.”
     
    “What?”
     
    “He’s right,” Mia said with a giggle. “You did tell him you’d go out with him when pigs flew.”
     
    Carlina laughed so hard she snorted. “That’s about as close to flying as a pig’s going to get.”
     
    Anthony dropped the ‘flying’ pig onto the table in front of me and parked his hunky butt on the bench next to me, forcing me to scoot closer to Alisa.
     
    “So what do you say, Gina?”
     
    “About what?” I asked, acting as though his sitting so close to me had no effect on me whatsoever.
     
    “You going to hold up your end of the deal?”
     
    “We didn’t have any deal,” I told him, trying to ignore the feel of his jean-clad thigh pressed against my gown.
     
    He raised a challenging brow.
     
    “We didn’t,” I argued weakly. I looked to my friends for some kind of help out of this situation. No such luck. They were too busy drooling over Anthony.
     
    So maybe I had mentioned something about flying pigs. “You’re not playing fair.”
     
    “All’s fair in love and war.”
     
    “Oh, please. Love has nothing to do with it.”
     
    “Yet,” he replied.
     
    “You’re crazy.”
     
    “About you.”
     
    My friends went nutso over that statement. So much so that people seated around us stopped eating and turned to gawk at us. I was really going to strangle him.
     
    “Fine,” I said in an irritated whisper. “I’ll go out with you - one time.”
     
    His mouth curled up into a triumphant grin. “That’s a start.”
     
    “And an end,” I insisted. “I repeat - this is a one-time thing, Anthony. And I get to pick the place.”
     
    “You name it.”
     
    “Cedar Point the Saturday after next.”
     
    “As in the amusement park?” he asked, some of his cockiness slipping away.
     
    I had him there. That would teach him to try and corner me into a date the way he had. I looked to my friends with my own triumphant grin.
     
    My friends knew as well as I did that Anthony would have no choice but to back out of our supposed date. It was a well-known fact that he and amusement park rides didn’t go well together. He had gone