Chapter Two
“Did my health insurance go through early?” A negative balance did not feel like it should be a forty-year-old woman’s problem. That was like a twenty-six-year-old-eating-three-day-old-Thai-food problem.
I’d get paid tomorrow, but the bank gods had no mercy when it came to the order of posted charges, and I wasn’t about to give up forty bucks for an overdraft fee on my birthday.
This is what emergency funds are for, I told myself in an attempt to calm my tits. I opened my banking app to transfer only enough to cover any overages, but the stupid loading wheel spun and spun until it froze.
Marlon let out a squeaky howl in his sleep as I rolled forward onto my stomach to reach for my laptop at the foot of the bed.
Dead. Of course it was. The thing was ancient and could barely hold a charge.
Rather than dig out the charger and wait for it to reboot, I decided to slither out of bed and into the main house to use Brody’s computer in his office. And maybe even dig through his stocked snack pantry. The man loved Pop-Tarts, and at the moment, a s’mores two-pack could
fix me.
Brody’s house was modern but warm thanks to the celebrity interior designer we’d hired on the recommendation of Jon Hamm.
We’d viewed so many properties and they all looked the same.
Stark white walls. Sharp lines. Sterile.
The Realtor was about ready to murder Brody and use his head as a trophy to ward off future potentially picky clients when I suggested we tour the properties at night to scope out the best twilight view, which ultimately did the trick.
Inside, I grabbed a pack of Pop-Tarts and heated them both in the toaster—which was more expensive than the newest fully loaded iPhone—before heading up to his office. I let my fingertips drag along the walls of the hallway past his bedroom, lingering for just a moment in the doorframe.
I sat down with my Pop-Tarts and typed in his password. The name of his first dog and the first year the Kansas City Royals won the World Series.
As the bank’s website loaded, I opened the drawers of his desk to thumb through the contents. Of course, there wasn’t a lot there. Brody never actually spent much time in this room. In fact, the only reason the office was finished was for the 73 Questions with Vogue segment he filmed last year.
I polished off a Pop-Tart and logged in to move funds from the tiny savings I had accrued.
Crisis averted. Ruby had given me some money from the sale of the house to get on my feet, but before then, my account held only a few hundred dollars at a time because Mom’s medical bills were never-ending and she died a year shy of Medicare eligibility.
So, I was a little paranoid about what limited money I had in savings now.
It felt like something could happen at any moment to empty my coffers.
I closed out of the window I was using to see that the tab with Brody’s email address was already open.
It wouldn’t hurt to look.
I’d read plenty of his emails before. Mostly the ones I was cc’ed on.
But still. I knew everything there was to know about Brody.
We’d been friends since college. He was a Kansas transplant with a disjointed relationship to his parents.
I’d seen him cry. I knew that he liked his underwear folded and not rolled.
I once drove him home after he had Botox done on a hemorrhoid.
I even knew that a psychic once told him that he was a best-in-show-winning dachshund in a past life and he fully believed it.
I couldn’t imagine I’d find anything remotely surprising.
Feeling justified, I pulled the chair back up to the desk and began to scroll. It was mostly unopened emails from his agent, Erin, or his manager, Savannah. And several opened emails from Arby’s. The man loved a roast beef sandwich.
It was reckless, I knew, but my fingers danced across the keyboard as I typed my name into the inbox search bar.
Doesn’t everyone want to know if they’re being talked about? Even in the most monotonous ways.
There were heaps of calendar invites from me and scheduling emails I was already on. A delivery confirmation for flowers he’d sent me and Ruby after Mom died.
My chest tightened. They had been beautiful, but the thing I’d never considered about flowers and funerals is that eventually the flowers die too and throwing them away is depressing as hell.
Then I spotted an email from his business manager/professional leech and former fraternity brother, Dalton.
Subject: Q4 Reorganization Plan
From: Dalton@
B-man,
I’ve got Mallory contacting the staffing agency re: assistants.
Moving on from Vera and hiring two or three part-time twenty-somethings will cut some costs on the overhead and eliminate the need for employee health insurance if we can get everyone on a part-time payroll.
(I’ll make sure they send over some cute girls too.) If we want to move forward with this production company plan, we need to keep looking for ways to cut corners and keep things a little lean for the first few years.
Also, this won’t affect your monthly take home, which is ideal.
Subject: Re: Q4 Reorganization Plan
From: Brody@
Let’s hit pause. V’s mom isn’t doing great, but we can follow through once things settle. Maybe before I leave for Warbringer filming. I hate to lose her, but she’ll understand. Vera’s a good girl.
My second Pop-Tart crumbled in my fist. Brody had plans to fire me?
Me? The most consistent and stable person in his life.
The person who often took pity on him and invited him over for holidays when the thought of going home to Kansas was too much.
The same person he’d been fucking on again and off again since college.
Vera is a good girl? A good girl, really?
The blood in my veins was steaming. Sizzling. How could he? How dare he?
I’d been there for Brody from the very beginning when he dropped out of school after landing his first big role.
I found him having a panic attack outside of the registrar’s office.
We were good friends before then, but it was at that moment when I stopped and crouched down on the floor next to him to help him breathe through the panic of dropping out before senior year and disappointing his family when things between us changed.
He needed me suddenly, and being needed was an absolute drug.
Especially after the fallout of that disastrous trip to Vegas just a few months prior.
We were both adrift and found that clinging to each other could afford us each some amount of solidity.
But now? I was just some disposable “good girl” who was nothing more than a line item.
I let the anger consume me, because if it didn’t, I might feel the deep embarrassment and shame burrowing under my skin.
The number of times I’d hooked up with Brody in a trailer on set only for me to run over to craft services and get his lunch when we were done, or the times he’d gone out to be publicly seen with a female costar only for him to text me on the way home to see if I was awake.
The delusion of what we could have been was quickly falling away and now all I could see was the reality of what we were.
I took the carcass of my Pop-Tart and hauled ass back over to the pool house before digging around for my charger and plugging in my laptop.
Ruby, my own grandmother, had dumped me, and I wasn’t about to let Brody do the same. I refused to let him see me as pathetic. Somehow the fact that he’d drawn this out for months and let me move into his backyard made this all so much worse. What must he think of me?
Never mind. I knew what he thought. Poor Vera and her sad little life living with her dying mom and has-been grandmother. Poor Vera tinkering with the same screenplay for years.
I was promising once. I was the student professors doted on.
Beside me, Marlon stood, turned in a tight circle, and sat back down in his exact same spot with a huff, like he could and never would know comfort.
“I know, buddy,” I whispered, feeling restless. Like it was impossible to ever feel fully settled.
I opened my laptop and began to type my formal and immediate resignation.