After a grueling ten-hour shift behind the grill at Red Lobster, Riley dragged herself toward the employee exit, each step a leaden reminder of the hours spent on her feet. Her temples throbbed with each heartbeat, a dull pain that had settled in around hour seven and refused to be silenced by the two generic ibuprofen she'd swallowed dry. The industrial-strength degreaser she'd used to clean down her station had done little to mask the persistent aroma of fried seafood that clung to her black uniform and had somehow worked its way into her pores—an occupational cologne she couldn't scrub away no matter how hard she tried.

Traces of grease still clung to her tattooed forearms despite her best efforts to remove every last bit. The intricate geometric pattern that wrapped around her right wrist—her first tattoo, inked on her eighteenth birthday as a quiet rebellion against her mother's traditionalism—disappeared beneath a smudge of butter that had somehow evaded her cleaning cloth. Her other arm bore a more recent addition: a delicate sprig of lavender, a reminder of her grandmother's garden in Charleston where she'd spent childhood summers learning to appreciate the slow, deliberate pace of Southern living before her family relocated to the Midwest when she was twelve.

The parking lot was bathed in darkness, shadows stretching long across the cracked asphalt only illuminated by dingy sodium streetlights that cast everything in a sickly orange glow. In the far corner, a dumpster overflowed with the day's refuse, the pungent smell of discarded seafood shells and stale hushpuppies carried on the cool night breeze. The March air had a bite to it, still clinging to winter's chill despite the calendar's promise of spring, and Riley hugged her thin jacket tighter around her slender frame as she fished her keys from her bag.