Run away from it all

Charlie Pepper had long hated Christmas.

He figured that the unfamiliar city was as good as any place to sweat out the holiday season. Charlie had spent most of his twenties in New York without ever having a reason to go to Philadelphia, but right now, it seemed a safe, manageable entry point back into the States. For one thing, Philadelphia had less obtrusive advertising plastered to poles and affixed to taxicabs than the cities he had spent most of his adult life in. And though plenty of windows there were lit from within with boisterous family gatherings, he could take it all in from a remove. It wasn’t his city—it was a borrowed city.

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