AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’spastmidnightby the time I’m dragging my suitcase over the cobbles of Devil’s Dip main street. Although just a forty-minute bus ride along a winding coastal road, it couldn’t be more different from Devil’s Cove. The sky is black and the streets silent, save for the harsh, salty wind cracking against my cheeks like a whip.
Dip is like Cove’s scruffy cousin. The one that got disinherited from the will and no longer gets invited to family reunions. It’s dirtier, darker. Even the glow around the Christmas lights is murkier. There’s no money in its bars and restaurants, just old, tired men slumped over their beers and greasy chicken dinners after a long day of slinging cargo at the port.
Like moths to a flame, most residents gravitate to the bright lights of Cove for employment, just like my parents did. They take the six-one-eight bus from opposite the old church at the top of the cliff, work a twelve-hour shift waiting on the rich and the rude, then retreat back to the slums with an apron full of tips and aching feet.
I won’t be joining them now that I’m going straight. In Cove, temptation and danger live in the light, making it near-impossible to miss. In Dip, the only things that can hurt me are the memories locked away in the Victorian townhouse five streets away.
I haven’t been back there since the murder, and I don’t plan on changing that.
I come to a stop outside a flaking green door. It’s sandwiched between a bike shop and a funeral home, and if it weren’t for the flickering glow of a nearby streetlamp, most mailmen would miss entirely the number eight carved into its wood.
It groans open with a little nudge from my boot. When the realtor handed me the keys a week after my eighteenth birthday, he mentioned the main door was busted, but the building owner was going to fix it “right away.”
I guess we have different interpretations of what “right away” means.
I climb the narrow staircase to the second floor, dump my suitcase and purse on the lino tiles, and stride over to 8A’s door. I hammer my fist against it and glare down at the door mat in disbelief.
Hi, I’m Mat.
Muffled footsteps, the turn of a lock, then a tall, blond guy darkens the doorway. He’s wearing basketball shorts and an annoyed scowl. It softens into a lop-sided grin when he looks down at me.
“Well, well, well. Look what fly decided to return to the dump.”
I ignore him. “Did you lose a bet?”
He frowns. “No?”
“So you bought this welcome mat voluntarily?”
We both glance back down at the floor and Matt chuckles. “You don’t think it’s funny?”
“I think it makes you deserving of being burgled.”
“But it’s a pun on my name. Jeez.” He runs a hand over his floppy hair. “You, Penny Price, wouldn’t know a good joke if it slapped you around the face.”
Irritation slithers up my spine. “I’ve got a good joke.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. Knock knock.”
His eyes thin. “All right. Who’s there?”
“Your favorite neighbor, and she’s about to set fire to your welcome mat if she doesn’t get the key to her apartment in the next five seconds.”
Matt frowns, then breaks into an easy grin. “Still an asshole, huh?”
“Unfortunately.”
With a small shake of his head, he walks down the hallway and invites me in with a lazy swoop of his hand. “Come in and make yourself comfortable. Finding this key might take me a while.”
“Why? Have you become messy?” But as I come to a stop in the small, familiar living room, I know that he hasn’t. It’s as nice and neat as I remember, filled with gray and cream furnishings.
“No, Penny, but you gave me your key—what, almost three years ago now? Well, you didn’t give it to me. You left it on my doorstep under a crate of beer and then vanished without a trace.” He disappears into the kitchen, and metallic-punctuated rummaging ensues. “You’re lucky I still have it. It’s in that kitchen drawer. You know, the one you toss everything that doesn’t have a home in?” More clanking. “Fucking hell,” he grunts. “I’ve got phone chargers, sim cards, screws for god-knows-what.” The noise stops. “Whoa, I’ve just found a Walkman. Remember them?”
“No, because I’m twenty-one.”
“Hey! I’m only a couple years older than you, girl.”
