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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.
