And if the buttercream was a little grainy or one of the layers was a bit overbaked, well, it was still sweet and just as tall as a cake in a magazine, and it cost only the price of supplies. Silva from three blocks over to make their wedding cake, because she loved to bake and had fancy pastry piping doodads. When Charlie’s friend’s cousin got married, they asked Mrs. When Charlie’s dad got what the doctor told him was a skin cancer, he drank a fifth of Maker’s Mark and asked a butcher friend to cut a divot out of his shoulder, because there was no way he could afford a surgeon. One is this: without the means to pay experts, it’s necessary to evolve a complex ecosystem of useful amateurs. There are countless differences between the lives of people with money and people without. Back in high school, she wouldn’t have given Charlie the time of day, and she probably didn’t want to tonight either. It was on that thought that Charlie looked up to see a test of her resolve walk through the double doors of Rapture Bar & Lounge.ĭoreen Kowalski’s face looked hot and blotchy with crying-she’d obviously tried to fix her makeup, but had wiped her mascara so hard that it winged out to one side. Little successes, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t proud of them. She had a job-with a timesheet, even-and a stolid brick of a boyfriend who paid his share of the rent. Sure, it had been hard to keep her worst impulses in check these past ten months, but it was better than being a lit match in a town she’d already doused in gasoline. If her shadow had been one of those magic ones, she was pretty sure even that thing would have run away.īut that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to be different.

Had fingers made for picking pockets, a tongue for lying, and a shriveled cherry pit for a heart.

Never met a bad decision she wasn’t willing to double down on. There’d always been something wrong with Charlie Hall. Keeping busy meant keeping out of trouble. This was her second shift today the afternoon guy quit abruptly to follow his boyfriend to Los Angeles and she was stuck with his hours until Odette hired a replacement.īut as tired as Charlie was, she needed the cash.

Sweat slicked the skin under her arms, at the hollow of her throat, and between her thighs. Charlie’s ugly Crocs stuck to the mats on the floor behind the bar, making a sticky, squelching sound.

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