is open twenty-four seven, a haven of burgers and bitter coffee for someone who doesn’t sleep at night. It’s been three days since my first shift on the yacht, and every night since, I’ve sat in a sticky booth under unforgiving strip lights with a copy of Real Estate for Dummies in front of me.
I’ve re-read the first line of the first chapter more times than I can count. I can’t get into it—not just because I know I’m never going to be the type of woman to wear a suit to work and have her face plastered on a bus stop bench, but also because, as I predicted, Raphael’s parting words are playing on a loop in my brain.
Don’t call me boss when you’re half-naked, Penelope. I might just get the wrong idea.
The curl of his fist. The set of his shoulders. The sharp line of his jaw as he glanced back at me. The image is so visceral that if I stare at the sheet of darkness through the window for long enough, I can see his silhouette against it.
I got under his skin for the briefest of moments, but nowhere near as deep as he’s gotten under mine.
Pathetic, really. Am I so immature and sex-starved that a squeeze of my breasts, a touch of friction, and a mild-mannered threat are all it takes for the butterflies in my stomach to brush the dust off their wings?
A server fills up my coffee cup, and I take a gulp before letting it cool down, in the hope that the burn will distract me from the nervous energy buzzing in my chest.
It doesn’t.
Behind me, the bell above the door chimes, ice-cold wind brushes my back, and warm laughter chases after it. I twist around to see a group of girls pour in. They’re around my age, and judging by the Santa hats and off-beat clatter of stilettos across the lino floor, they’ve just come from a Christmas party.
The one in the sparkly dress slams her palms against the counter. “Gimme everything you’ve got!”
Laughter ripples through the diner, tilting the lips of servers and the three lone diners occupying the other corner booths.
“But seriously,” a girl in a red skirt groans, coming up behind her friend and wrapping her arms around her waist. “We start work in three hours, and the only things that’ll soak up the vodka are burgers and fries.”
Feeling like an orphan peering into a family’s living room on Christmas morning, I watch the exchange over the back of the booth seat, until my smile fades and the hollow void behind my sternum grows denser. It’s like I’ve watched them open their presents in front of the fire and have gradually realized the warmth and happiness inside won’t reach me through the glass. The reality is that I’m left outside in the cold with nothing.
I bet they share jeans and confess their odd obsessions with men who hate them.
Sucking in a breath to anchor myself, I turn back to the wall of the diner. Ignoring a pitiful smile from an old man in the corner booth opposite, I study the signed football shirts behind Plexiglas, and grainy photographs of Z-list celebrities shaking hands with the owner.
“Wait—turn this up!”
I glance behind me, just in time to see red-skirt girl lunge over the counter and grab a remote control. My gaze follows where she’s pointing it to and lands on the chunky television mounted on the wall.
Breaking News. The words flash red and white below a somber-looking woman. She’s wrapped up in a cashmere scarf and stands in front of a charred building with a padded microphone grazing her lips.
The girl behind me stabs at the volume button.
“I’m standing outside the former Hurricane casino and bar tonight, shortly after news broke that the owner has asked the Atlantic City Fire Department to cease their investigation into the fire.” The reporter glances at the paper in her hand. We’re here with the owner himself, Martin O’Hare.” The camera pans to reveal a man standing beside her. “Martin, could you tell us why you’ve decided to call off the investigation?”
An icy awareness spreads over my skin, chilling everything that lies beneath. It feels instinctive to get up and run, but I’m frozen to the plastic booth. I can only stare at familiar eyes and listen to a familiar voice, as panic climbs up my throat.
“First of all, we’d like to extend our highest gratitude to the men and women of the Atlantic City Fire Department; they’ve worked tirelessly on this investigation over the last few days. However, being mindful that public services are overworked and funds are overstretched, we’ve decided to pursue other methods of justice that don’t burden the taxpayer.”
“Are you saying you’re taking the law into your own hands?”
Martin lets out a gruff laugh. “You make us sound like thugs, Claire.”
“Well…it does sound a little sinister; don’t you think? Why not let law enforcement handle the issue? There’s a suspected arsonist on the loose, after all.”
He smiles tightly. “As I said, we don’t want to waste any more inspectors’ time or taxpayers’ money. We’re fortunate enough to have the resources to hire private investigators, and out of respect to the residents of this great city, that’s what we’ll do.”
“And when your private investigator catches him?”
His stare shifts to the camera. It reaches through the television and singes my clammy skin.
“Who said it’s a him?”
My vision wavers like it has its own pulse, but at the heart of it, Martin O’Hare’s all-knowing glare is as sharp as a knife. The news cuts suddenly to an orange inferno lighting up the night’s sky. Vicious flames licking red bricks until they turn black. There it is: the epitome of my personality—impulsive and bitter—in all of its blazing glory. And here I am, watching it from a fucking diner over a cup of coffee.
Christ, what the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve been here obsessing over a satin-wrapped monster and feeling sorry for myself because I have no friends, as if I’m not on the fucking run. As if I didn’t stuff my life into one suitcase and hop on the first Greyhound heading in the opposite direction of the mess I’d made.
Martin O’Hare knows. He knows I set fire to his casino, and all I can hope is he doesn’t know where I went after I lit the match.
“Hey girl—you okay?”
Sequins, stilettos, and loud voices graze over me, and only when I slam a twenty on the counter and catch the concerned eye of a server do I realize I’m on my feet and heading toward the exit.
“Never better,” I croak, before bursting out onto the street.
The night is lit by tacky Christmas decorations. Candy canes glow red and white in shop windows, and blow-up Santas tied to street lamps wave at me under a film of frost. As my boots slip over the icy ground, I slow to a stop and sigh out a streak of white against the sky.
Damn it. The last place I want to be is my apartment, because the rooms are too small and my panic is too large.
Your sins will catch up with you eventually. They always do.
I suppose I already knew that, long before I struck a match, dropped it in a vodka bottle, and left it on the doorstep of the Hurricane bar.
That’s why I started my Grand Quest in the first place. Not because I truly wanted a career more high-brow than swindling, but because I knew it was like a gateway drug. Once I got hooked, I’d only spiral into deeper, darker depths of sin. And look at me now; within the span of three years, I’ve gone from making men’s wallets a little lighter to burning down buildings.
I should never have let myself get this deep. I should have gone straight a long time ago.
A crackle of static prickles on my skin, and as I glance up to the sky, the first drop of rain lands on my top lip with a heavy plop. Another falls, and then another. Within seconds, a storm is cascading down from the heavens like God has dropped his marble collection.
And then a bolt of lightning illuminates the sky, startling me.
Shit. That’s all I need.
Holding my breath, I hug my book to my chest, tuck my chin into the collar of my soggy coat, and break into a run toward the closest source of shelter—the oversized phone booth in front of the bakery. I slip inside and slam my back against the door.
The rumble of thunder rolls in seconds after, vibrating the glass walls of the booth. I gasp in a lungful of stale, humid air and will my legs not to buckle underneath me.
Of all the moments for a rare coastal thunder storm, it has to be now?
As another sharp flash of light fills the booth, I desperately scrabble for something to distract myself. I wring out my hair and then, under the flickering glow of the light bulb, inspect my book for water damage. Thankfully, it’s covered in protective plastic because it’s a library book. The irony of me caring brews a bitter laugh which melts into the next roll of thunder.
I’m losing my fucking mind.
I close my eyes and lean my head against the door for a few seconds.
Inside the booth, my ragged breaths sour into carbon dioxide, and beyond the box, sheets of rain distort red and white lights. I squeeze my eyes shut for the next flash of lightning. When it passes, I open them and my bleary gaze lands on something stuck on the back wall of the payphone. Something familiar. I blink to sharpen my vision, then I lunge forward and snatch it from its thumb tack.
A matte-black card, gold embossed letters, and a number printed in silky black numerals. Another laugh escapes me, only this one doesn’t taste as bitter.
Sinners Anonymous.
The night I found my first Sinners Anonymous card is burned into my memory. I was thirteen, hiding in the Visconti Grand Bathroom because Nico hadn’t come to the casino that night. The card was tucked into the mirror a foot above my reflection. I don’t know what possessed me to slip it into my pocket, but I did.
That night, as I glared at the glow from car headlights passing over my bedroom ceiling, I suddenly remembered I had it. So, I crept downstairs and sat on the armchair opposite my father passed out on the sofa, and I called the number.
The woman’s voice was robotic but it was still the softest I’d ever heard. She didn’t cut me off like my mother did. Didn’t shout at me like my father. She made me want to open up. Made me feel like I finally had someone to talk to.
For the next five years, I used the hotline like a diary. It was my anonymous safe haven, a space to moan about my parents’ drunken fighting and discuss the new tricks I’d learned from Nico.
I know she’s not even real, but I feel kind of guilty for leaving her behind when I left for Atlantic City.
I rub my thumb over the textured header and catch my bottom lip with my teeth. This is the third card I’ve seen since arriving back on the Coast. The first was in my apartment, and the second was tucked into the pages of the Bible in my hospital room.
As it fell out onto my starchy bed sheets, I’d had a thought, and the same one creeps into my head again now.
Religious people confess their sins, right? Maybe if I did the same, I wouldn’t feel them tugging at my ankles, attempting to drag me into the fiery pits of hell below. Maybe if I use the hotline for its intended purpose, I won’t hear the roar of fire echoing around my brain between every heartbeat, or maybe I won’t catch a whiff of smoke every time I turn my head too quickly.
But I don’t believe in God. Where was he when my mother got her head blown off? When my father was crying out for him in the corner of the kitchen?
God didn’t save them that night, and he didn’t save me, either. Luck did. I felt it in the warm and weighty charm around my neck. My whole body buzzed with shooting stars and horseshoes and the number seven, not with the voice of the big man in the sky.
But that doesn’t stop me from reaching for the receiver or squeezing it against my ear as I flinch under another bolt of lightning. Before I know it, I’m squinting at the keypad, punching in a familiar number.
I hold my breath for all three rings.
Click.
“You have reached Sinners Anonymous,” my old friend says. “Please leave your sin after the tone.”
I pause. Exhale heavily down the mouthpiece and rake a hand through my sopping-wet hair. My sin is right there, stuck in the back of my throat, too thick and damaging to travel any farther. It grows bigger, denser, and my breath grows labored in an attempt to get around it.
Why do I feel like she’ll judge me? She’s not even real, for fuck’s sake.
My eyes drop to the book in my hand. To the label glued to the spine: Property of Atlantic City Public Library.
I choke out a shaky laugh and lift my gaze toward the rain hammering on the roof.
“I borrowed three library books, and I’ll never get to return them.”
