I'm Working on Building Suspense. . .

       Tara McKinley sat in an armchair in her favorite Starbucks looking over her final draft for her grad school application. In her left hand was an iced coffee, and in her right, a cigarette. And she frowned as she smoked it. She promised her dad that she would quit months ago. He was constantly worried about her. Would call her at a moment's notice to make sure she didn't have a cigarette in her hand. She eyed the cigarette, frowned harder, and then smashed it down in the ashtray. There wasn't any reason that she shouldn't be able to quit. It was just a little stick. A cool, ashy tasting, mental -cool- down inducing kind of stick. Her cigarettes kept her from falling into the clutches of insanity in a world where everything depended on her being sane.

       Just as she reached to grab the cigarette and re-light it, she heard a cheery voice behind her, stopping her dead in her tracks.

        "I thought we agreed the cancer sticks weren't a good look." Tara turned to face the voice, which belonged to Janelle Simmons, her younger sister. 

        "Nelle, I thought you'd never make it." She stood, leaving the cigarette in the ashtray, to hug her sister. They shared a brief embrace and Janelle took her seat in the chair across from Tara's. 

         They spent a few minutes just looking each other over, it had been awhile since their last encounter. The two were so identical in looks, people often mistook them for twins. With Janelle being only eighteen months younger, she and Tara had the exact same body type. Curvy and lean, with the right assets to pull all of the wrong men. Something they both had learned at a young age. Mocha skin with chocolate eyes, and they both possessed long, flowing, black hair that hung down their backs. Well at least they had. 

         Janelle trained her eyes on Tara's new haircut. It stopped right at her ears, flattened to her head in big, soft curls. It enhanced the look of her big, brown eyes, and made her look her age at 28. 

         "So you cut your hair," Janelle stated, leaving all emotion from her voice. She didn't want to sound as if she were passing any judgment. It had been too long since she'd last seen her sister, and she didn't want to send her running for the hills, yet.
         "Yes, I decided it was time for a big change." Tara closed her laptop and put it in her Coach handbag. A little treat to herself, costing her upwards of four hundred dollars. Tara shivered at the idea of looking at her credit card bill at the end of the month. She had been buying a lot of little treats for herself ever since she had found the panties. She shook the thoughts away before they could even begin to plague her mind and looked into her little sister's eyes.
         She wanted like hell to be able to just let her guard down and tell Janelle everything. They were sisters, and before last year, they had been the best of friends. She didn't know Janelle like she used to, and she didn't know how she would react to the news. But she needed to tell somebody before she drove herself crazy. Her little treats could only sustain her for so long.
         "So what made you pick up and decide to finally call me?" Tara chuckled. Leave it to Janelle to break the ice and clear the tension. "I mean, we haven't talked in almost a year, and the last time we did speak, I recall you saying you never wanted to see or hear from me again. So this must be pretty heavy." Tara sighed. She was right, if it weren't for this, she wouldn't have reached out to her. So she would just have to come out with it.
         She took a deep breath and braced herself before whispering, "I'm divorcing Marlon."