SADIE
THE BELL JINGLED WHEN I stepped inside Huck’s Diner. The smell of eggs and bacon hit me immediately.
My stomach lurched.
My head throbbed—from the booze and the wig.
And my heart ached from what I’d done.
Dizzy with hunger and sick from alcohol, I wasn’t sure if I needed to eat or vomit.
Simon sat in a corner booth with a cup of coffee in front of him and a magazine off to the side. Even though there was hardly anyone in the place, he still waved me over.
As I walked unsteadily toward him, both the wheels of my suitcase and the soles of my heels stuck to the stained linoleum.
Sliding into the booth across from Simon, I nodded hello and pulled my sweater tighter around myself. Even inside here, there was still a chill in the air from the constant rain, but at least the hurricane winds had passed. Then again, tucked inside the safety of the hotel room with Sundance last night, it wasn’t like I ever felt the brunt of the storm.
A gray-haired woman sidled up to our table with a notepad in her hand and a pen behind her ear. She fumbled around for it and then looked at me. “What can I get you?”
“Just coffee, please.”
Simon raised a brow at me. “Have you eaten?”
I shook my head no.
“She’ll have the sunrise breakfast with wheat toast.”
“And can I get you anything else, sweetie?” she asked Simon.
Sweetie?
“Just a coffee refill.” He smiled.
That was when I noticed Simon had an empty plate to the side of him. He must have been here for a while.
“Jasmine, this table needs coffee,” she hollered, and another older woman was at our table filling our cups with piping hot tar before our waitress had even tucked the pen back behind her ear.
When they were both gone, Simon reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “You look like shit.”
I stared down at his hand and then up at him. He let go like I’d burned him. It must have been the look in my eyes. “Good, because I feel like shit.”
“It gets easier,” he said, obviously knowing what I was referring to.
I swallowed the coffee, and it tasted just as bad as it looked. “What if I don’t want it to?” I commented. I was about as far removed from this conversation as I could be being so close to him.
He shrugged. “We all do what we have to do, Sadie. So, how’d it go?”
“Fine.” One word. One answer. I had nothing else.
My eyes flittered from the suitcase, to the large shopping bag I’d thrown the other case in, to my purse which held the five thousand dollars Sundance had in his wallet. Simon was asking me to be more specific, and when I swung my gaze back to him, it landed on the magazine he had left open on the table.
Staring back at me was not only the latest issue of Hotlanta but also the very same stock image I’d seen weeks ago. The one that got me fired and started me down this rabbit hole.
It was of a younger Sundance.
I strained to see the headline. It read:
WHO’S WHO in ATLANTA
A LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHER MIGHT LOOK LIKE SIN IN FRONT OF THE LENS, BUT IS HE SIN FROM BEHIND IT? by Elise Petra and Chloe Carmichael
Oh my God, Sundance was a photographer!
A photographer.
And I had stolen his camera.
His livelihood.
Swallowing the saliva pooling at the back of my throat from the fact that I had taken something this man needed, I felt my entire body start to tremble.
I knew I couldn’t live with the consequences of screwing with his career. Without thought, I reached across the table to snatch up the magazine, and when I did, I knocked over the piping hot coffee cup. The brown tar landed right on Simon’s lap. He jumped up with a curse, and the waitress was at our table before I could even apologize. “Oh, darling,” she said, “let me help you.”
He didn’t even look at either of us as he hopped from one foot to the other, and then took off for the restroom.
Alone, I knew what I had to do.
Summoning the iron willpower I had been forced to grow while I was on my own, I rose to my feet and grabbed the bag beside me. The waitress was wiping up the bench seat across from me and staring at me with irises as hard as diamonds.
I knew I didn’t have much time, so I quickly decided that the time it would take me to go around the woman, and the possibility of getting trapped by her, was not worth the risk of taking the suitcase, which contained the second camera.
I also worried Simon would return.
Reaching inside my purse, I pulled a pen and a key from it. While the waitress cleaned up, I quickly scratched a note on a napkin.
Simon,
I can’t do this. Here is the key to my storage unit. Sell it all and use the money from everything for Riley. Do what you have to do to get him the rest. I’m sorry.
Sadie
With my heart in my throat, I set the pen down. Folding the napkin over, I scribbled Simon’s name on the top. The waitress had finished cleaning up but hadn’t moved. She was staring at me, but this time there was some kind of understanding in her eyes. Like she could see my pain. I said nothing as I turned and hurried toward the door. She didn’t stop me.
I couldn’t help Riley.
Not in this way.
With each step I took, I saw that article. Saw Sundance. Saw Elise. Saw Chloe. Did she have an ulterior motive? Had she wanted my job? At least Elise had taken my mistake and turned it around. Righting my wrong for the benefit of the company was so like her. I wanted to think she’d done it to help me gain legitimacy. Even though it was at Sundance’s expense, she wouldn’t care. Then again, it was probably to launch Chloe’s career—her Carrie Bradshaw of Atlanta was on the rise.
The bell jingled behind me, and I ran faster.
Simon called my name, “Sadie, come back here!”
I ran faster.
The bell jingled again, and this time the woman from the diner hollered, “Sweetie, your bill.”
Simon was sweetie.
I was darling.
She wasn’t calling me.
It didn’t matter either way, I never looked back.
I knew better.