Page 13 of Sinners Atone
“Thought you had the night off?” he grumbles, tucking his hands under his armpits.
“Well, good evening to you too, Roger. I’m having a swell night, thank you for asking,” I chime. “How’s Lou?”
Ignoring both my sarcasm and my question about his wife, he yanks open the back passenger door. He glares at Leah as she crocodile-crawls onto the seat. “She gonna be sick in my car?”
“Yes,” I say sweetly.
He scowls at me.
I smile back.
Roger likes to play this silly little game where he pretends he doesn’t like me, or more specifically, doesn’t like me folding drunk girls into the back of his taxi and asking him to take them home for free,just one more time.He bitches and moans, but he does it anyway, plus texts me a snippy one-word confirmation when they’re safely behind their front door. He’s got a heart of gold under his too-tight plaid shirts. Besides, I’m sure he’d want someone to do the same for his daughter.
I know he loves me deep down, anyway. At the very least, he loves the homemade brownies I hand out at the Devil’s Cove taxi tank every Saturday night. He always inches down his window just enough to snatch them out of my hand like a starving raccoon.
We stare at each other for a little longer, but staring is one of my talents, so of course, Roger breaks eye contact first. He curses into the wind, slams the door shut on Leah, and leans against it.
“I’m getting sick of being your personal run-around, kid. Ain’t it about time you learned to drive? You could waste your own damn time instead of mine.”
Now it’s my turn to ignore his question and the way it prickles my cheeks and curdles in my stomach.
I clear my throat and force a tight smile. “Excuse me, please,” I say, trying to keep the wobble from my voice. I usher him away from the passenger door with a flutter of a fresh antibacterial wipe in my hand, then rap-tap-tap on the window.
When Leah rolls it down, I fish out a water bottle from my SOS bag and drop it on her lap. “Sip it, don’t gulp. When you get home, don’t get into bed until you’ve had two more glasses of water and eaten a slice of dry toast. Oh, and don’t forget to take your makeup off. Did you know that every time you don’t takeyour makeup off, you age ten days?” I heard this on TikTok, so it’s probably not true, but I’ve found the threat of it is enough to get most girls to at least drag a wipe over their face before their head hits the pillow. “Sleep on your left side if you still feel sick. Actually, sleep on your side anyway, because?—”
“Enough with that damn monologue,” Roger grunts, rounding the car and yanking the driver’s door open. “I’ve heard you say it so many times, I could recite it in my sleep.”
I catch his eye over the roof of the car and raise a brow. “And it shows. I can tell you take your makeup off every night without fail.”
Even though the light from the car’s headlights barely touch him, I’m sure I see the corner of his lips lift under his handlebar mustache. Before I can tease him about it, his shoulders pinch. With a tight grip on the doorframe, he twists around and glares out into the night.
Ice-cold silence crackles against the nape of my neck. Holding my breath, I ball the wipe in my fist and stare at the rigid line of his back. It feels like ages before he looks back at me, and when he does, the unease in his gaze makes the breath catch at the back of my throat.
“Don’t hang around, kid” is all he says.
That rough hand reaches for me again, and I wonder if it grabbed hold of him too.
With a quick nod, I push away the paranoia and duck my head through Leah’s window. I press the wipe in her hand and give her shoulder a sympathetic pat. “You’ll feel better in the morning, I promise.”
She smiles weakly and hiccups. “You’re so nice, Wren. Like, if God held a gun to my head and told me I had to nominate only one person I know to go to heaven, it’d be you.”
And there it is.
My laugh warps with delirium, and suddenly, the December chill has lost its bite and all I can feel is the warmth of her words.
You’re so nice, Wren.Like everyone else does on the Devil’s Coast, she said it like one would say the grass is green or the sky is blue. Like it’s a simple, undeniable fact.
Though I don’t take drugs, aside from the occasional Tylenol, I know the high from being calledniceis comparable. And I don’t just dabble in “nice” either.
I’ve had a full-blown addiction to it since I was eighteen.
Volunteering at the hospital and peeling drunk partygoers off the Devil’s Cove boardwalk is the tip of the iceberg. I do everything—from knitting onesies for premature babies and checking in daily with my elderly neighbors, to holding bake sales for every charity under the sun—and I do it all for my hit of nice.
The Good Samaritan, the Angel in Pink. The fun sponge who writes down the license plates of every punter at the bar she works at, just in case they ignore her makeshift “no drunk driving” sign. I don’t care how the residents of the Devil’s Coast call me nice, as long as they call me it.
But it’s polite to be modest, so I dismiss Leah’s compliment with a flap of my hand. “Nice is just what I do, honey!”
With a reluctant promise to text me when Leah’s home safe, Roger pulls out of the parking lot. I wave them off with a bright smile, but when the headlights simmer, dim, and fade, I find myself alone in the dark with a heart that’s sliding south.
