Page 1 of Guilty as Sin

Chapter 1

Cora

I focus on balancing the three drinks in my hands as I wind my way back to our table. It’s crowded for a Wednesday night, the usually laid-back lounge teeming with White Sox fans after the late summer game. But I’m good at being unnoticeable in most spaces, which is to my advantage as I slip easily between drunk people.

I reach our high top and distribute our drinks. A tequila sunrise for Lucy, a gin and tonic (hold the tonic) for Jennifer, and a whiskey ginger ale for me. We clink glasses.

“To getting our table back!” Jennifer yells toward the people in our regular booth, but luckily, they don’t hear her. Lucy and I exchange a look, and I regret ordering Jennifer’s drink at its regular strength. I reach out to squeeze her hand.

“Jen, you are one of the smartest women I know.”

“You’re just saying that,” she grumbles.

“Do you really think I would’ve opened a clinic with you otherwise?” When she doesn’t answer, I state the obvious to her. “Dave’s the one being an idiot.”

Jennifer puts her head on the table, her magenta hair fanning over her shoulders. She and Dave have been dating for six years, and she’s getting impatient for him to propose.

“Marriage isn’t something to force,” I remind her.

I’ve said it so many times it might as well be my mantra. It’s more than a platitude. Growing up watching my parents, whose marriage was arranged, I know it’s true. But I can’t explain my parents’ misery to Jennifer. My father’s cruelty, my mother’s withdrawal. And their marriage itself, the cementing of an alliance between rival families. An arrangement like that doesn’t make sense in present-day America. Not unless you’re part of that world—the world I left behind.

Lucy nods in agreement with me, while Jennifer groans and pushes her drink away.

“Watch, you and Noah will get married before I do,” she grumbles. The idea is so ridiculous I laugh.

“We’ve been on two dates,” I say. We have a third scheduled in a few days, dinner at a restaurant he says will be a surprise, something I’m very much looking forward to.

“Ooh,” Lucy says, “I didn’t realize there was a second. Did he wear khakis to that one too?” she asks. I purse my lips at her, because yes, Noah wore khakis on both of our dates.

“I really regret telling you that.”

Lucy grins at me. She’s a brilliant doctor, a credit to our ophthalmology practice, even if she’s a bit nosy. She’s still shadowing me and Jennifer, but she’ll be ready for her own patients soon. Given her astuteness, she’s also a great reminder of why I don’t share the details of my life, even if it means never truly connecting with people.

But the details of what Noah wore yesterday isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s the distant past I have to keep secret. My childhood, my family, the identity I was born with. Withholding those details from my friends undervalues our friendship, I know that, which only deepens my guilt. I care about these women. I want to reciprocate their sharing of past traumas and funny stories, of sibling rivalries and disastrous family vacations.

But I can’t.

Even though she’s my business partner, Jennifer knows only the vaguest outline of my past. Namely, that I have one but don’t like to talk about it. She must’ve informed Lucy about my reticence at some point, because now Lucy focuses her curiosity mainly on my present. Which includes my meager dating life.

“You guys should take a trip,” Lucy suggests. “A weekend getaway. See if he packs only khakis.” She gives me a teasing grin, then surreptitiously slides Jennifer’s too-strong drink out of her reach. It’ll be up to me and Lucy to finish it. As twentysomethings with med school debt, we don’t waste alcohol.

“I know you’re joking, but a trip could actually be nice,” I say. “I haven’t taken a vacation in a while.”

“You haven’t taken a vacation ever,” Lucy corrects.

She sips from Jen’s drink and passes it to me.

“You deserve some time off,” she says. “Talk to Mr. Khaki about it, see what he thinks. I bet he’d be very interested in the two of you staying in a bed and breakfast. Or in a regular hotel. Or an RV.”

“And you?” I ask Lucy, an obvious pivot. “How are you and Rachel these days?”

“Still occasional,” Lucy says. “We enjoy each other’s company, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

“It should be the only thing that matters,” Jennifer mumbles from her folded arms, her head still on the table.

I have no useful response to that. Nothing other than Marriage isn’t something to force. So I say nothing and take a large swallow of Jennifer’s drink. Oof. Gin.

Lucy’s phone pings, and she seizes the opportunity to change the subject.