Sugar and Spice by Mari Carr

thought of being so weak jarred her from her miserable state and she drew away from her sister.
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    “I’m sorry,” she whispered, turning around to grab a tissue from the box Allie kept on an end table.
    Allie smiled at her, though worry lined every part of the gesture. “I haven’t seen you cry since grade school,” she admitted. “I’m scared as shit right now. What happened, Ginny?”
    Ginny tried to set her sister’s mind at ease. “I’m fine. I shouldn’t have carried on like that. I just—” Ginny sucked in a breath to hold back the sobs that threatened to come again. “I just made a huge mistake and I don’t think there’s any way to fix it.”
    “What mistake?” Allie asked.
    “I had sex with R-Ryan last night,” Ginny confessed, the words sticking in her throat as she spoke them.
    “Ryan who?”
    Ginny laughed at the unexpected question. Of course her sister wouldn’t know who she was talking about—neither of them ever referred to Travers by his first name. Her sister’s utterly perplexed face somehow managed to lighten Ginny’s heavy heart.
    “Travers,” she explained.
    Allie’s jaw dropped and Ginny watched her sister struggle to form her next question—hell, her next word. “You? Travers? You? Sex ? Oh my God!”
    Ginny was a tad offended by Allie’s total disbelief. “Well, I don’t think it’s that unfathomable.”
    “Ginny. Are you jerking my chain? What’s the date?”
    “Why?”
    “It’s gotta be April Fool’s Day. You and Travers got together and decided to fuck with my head. That’s it, isn’t it?”
    “Allie,” Ginny said calmly. “I slept with Travers last night. We had sex—all night.”
    “Oh my God,” her sister repeated and this time, Ginny realized the sentiment was correct.
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    “Yeah,” she added. “Oh my God.”
    “How did this happen?” Allie asked.
    “Oh you know, the usual way. What do you mean how did it happen?” Ginny felt her ragged nerves stretched even further under the pressure of her sister’s utter astonishment.
    “Ginny,” her sister began impatiently. “You and Travers have been best friends since God was a baby. You’ve been drunk together, you’ve had sleepovers at each other’s houses, you’ve gone on extended business trips and never, never have you stepped over the line of friendship. What happened last night?”
    “It was my birthday,” Ginny replied. Allie shook her head and raised her hands as if to say “so what?”
    “Well, Liam said he had to work through the weekend, so we had to postpone our romantic getaway.”
    “Liam’s a weenie,” Allie interjected and Ginny smiled. Ryan had said basically the same thing and he’d been right.
    “I agree.”
    “You do? Since when?” Allie asked.
    “Since last night when I witnessed him wrapped around some slut at the Way Down Under Club.”
    Allie’s face flushed with anger. “That motherfucker.”
    “Amen, but that’s not really the point here, is it?”
    Allie looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe that is the point. Travers invites you to the club, you see your boyfriend doing the nasty with some whore, so you hop into bed with someone convenient. If I know Travers, he was as pissed off as you at the sight of Liam and he tried to comfort you, right?”
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    “Sort of,” Ginny said. She didn’t like thinking of Ryan as a convenience or a consolation prize. What they’d done together far surpassed mere consoling or a rebound response on her part.
    “I’m not really surprised you ended up in bed with Travers,” Allie added so confidently Ginny wasn’t sure how to respond.
    “Really? Why not?”
    “Because he’s a little crazy when it comes you. Always has been.”
    Ginny shook her head, unsure she’d heard her sister correctly. “Wait a minute.
    What do you mean ‘crazy’?”
    “It’s always the same thing whenever you’re around him. He has one eye on whatever is happening in