Fat Fridays Read Online Free PDF

bigger, hoping to look...different.
    Frustrated, she threw her hairbrush down on top of her dresser with a loud smack. No matter how much she tried to look like Tiffany Wright and some of the other hot girls at work, it didn’t happen. She couldn’t put herself together with their style. It wasn’t just the way she seemed so plain next to them, it was everything. They were so full of confidence, so sophisticated. She was still stuck at home, living with her parents, saving money for a place of her own. She hated her pitiful life.
    Her parents were like stones around her neck, weighing her down with their constant fighting, their low lifestyle, their clinging to her. With her sister gone and married, Carol Ann was the one left at home to put up with it. She gritted her teeth. She wanted a lot more from life and she was going to get it. She just didn’t have a cotton pickin’ idea how.
    Giving herself a last look in the mirror, Carol Ann practiced her Cameron Diaz smile.
    “Carol Ann?”
    Mama’s shrill voice, calling from the kitchen, shattered her dreams as sure as if her mother had thrown a rock at the glass in front of her.
    “Git the paper ‘fore you do anythin’ else,” her mother said. “What time y’all be back from errands? Seein’ it’s Saturday, we’ll git our usual supper.”
    Carol Ann clenched her jaw. Pizza. And every morning, without fail, she brought the paper inside for her parents. Just once, she wished Mama would let her do that without reminding her. At work, she handled some very important things for her boss. Why couldn’t her mother understand she could damn well remember to get the paper on her own? And couldn’t they, just once, have something other than crappy pizza on Saturdays?
    “Carol Ann? You hear me?”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    Carol Ann thought she’d have a better life by now. Thank God for MacTel. She loved the women in the Fat Fridays group. Regardless of their age differences, they were friends, sweet as pie. They were the people who gave her hope that life could be different for her once she’d saved for the house on the other side of town she was determined to have.
    “I’m waitin’ on ya, Carol Ann.”
    She sighed and glanced around her bedroom, praying for that day. After her sister left home, Carol Ann had done her best to fix up the room that was now hers alone. She’d painted the walls a pale, pale pink and sent away for a country quilt and bed skirt at a price Mama never would have allowed her to buy. She was slowly paying off the loan on the bedroom suite she’d bought at a terrific sale. She’d also started a hope chest of sorts, filling it with household items on sale, praying for the day when she’d be gone, living on her own.
    “Carol Ann? You payin’ attention?”
    “Okay, Mama,” she answered, feeling about twelve years old. God! If she couldn’t somehow change her life, she’d die.

CHAPTER SIX
SUKIE
    I t was one of those gray Sunday mornings when Sukie wanted to snuggle inside a warm sweatshirt and stay in jeans and fuzzy slippers all day. Alone, and with no plans, that’s exactly what she intended to do.
    She stepped over to the mirror above her bureau and gave her image an unflinching stare. Classic features coated with sadness—not too bad, considering the last several months. As usual, her stubborn hair sprang out in rebellious brown curls. She smoothed back the skin on her face. It had begun to show signs of giving in to gravity’s relentless tug. Still, people never guessed her age. Elizabeth told her that if she’d let herself go, dress a little younger, kick up her heels a bit, they’d think she was Elizabeth’s sister, not her mother. Funny, Sukie thought, it was always Ted who insisted she dress the part of conservative spouse to his bank presidency. What a crock!
    The phone rang. Elizabeth . Sukie settled in an easy chair in her bedroom to talk to her daughter.
    “I’ve signed up for the computer courses at the library,” Sukie