Chapter 9

I should have realized it was too soon to be calling us “happily ever after.” We’d met last February, both having been stood up by Valentine’s dates. We’d moved quickly and pretty happily into couplehood.

In September, two things had happened. Michael asked me to move in with him when my lease was up, and he’d gotten the big case. Everything had pretty much gone downhill from there.

“You could move back up north,” Denise said, trying to sound casual.

It was a thing with my family. They didn’t want to come right out and say they thought my choice to become an actor was doomed to fail and I should come back home, but they all thought it. I knew they did.

And maybe they were right. The parts did seem to be drying up. I was working as a part-time waiter to struggle to pay the rent on my apartment. Hell, maybe somebody had even been talking to Michael, trying to convince him I was using him. It was possible. I knew his friend, Dave, didn’t like me.