And I was forty. All of a sudden. Out of nowhere.
Forty didn’tsoundold. But I was feeling it. It was like I’d suddenly become the human form of the “over the hill” aisle at a party store. I was used to being a certain degree of invisible. All the body positivity in the world couldn’t penetrate what it felt like to be a fat woman in this industry. But forty was a level up on the scale of insignificance. On the bright side, with this level of obscurity, I could probably commit a heinous crime and get away with it.
As much it seemed like it, though, tonight wasn’t a pity party. A party required attendees. (Ba-dum-tss!)
This, however, was a cozy night with a bottle and a half of cheap rosé and a rewatch of the final season ofBoy Meets World. And then maybe the last episode ofSix Feet Underif I felt like I still needed toexorcise some emotional demons. I was a chronic rewatcher. It was comforting. The stakes were low.
In a way, it felt like unraveling a puzzle and doing a deep dive on why my favorites were my favorites. My Intro to Creative Writing professor, a romance author who refused to share her pen name, always said that the best writers were natural observers, but sometimes I felt like I observed more than I experienced. If I couldn’t bring experience to the table, at least I could consume. That was something I could do while I took care of Mom or reorganized Brody’s pantry.
As the credits on the final episode rolled, I began scrolling through channels until I stumbled upon a Brody classic,Forever Yours. Brody didn’t do many rom-coms anymore, but this one had really resonated and became a bit of a moment. He played a widower who matched on a dating app with the woman who happened to be the funeral director for his late wife’s funeral years before. I’d studied the script back and forth and liked it quite a bit. I always read scripts before he signed on, and this one had felt solid. It was funny, yet weighty. But then after some rewrites and with only a week left on set, I found a gaping plot hole everyone else had seemingly missed. I pitched Brody a fix and he got the studio to extend production by a few days for a reshoot. People still quoted lines back to him in the streets. Lines from the reshot scenes—many that I wrote word for word.
That wasn’t the first time and it certainly wasn’t the last time I’d helped Brody out on set. So even though this movie would never have my name in the credits, I couldn’t help but feel a little proud whenever I saw it replaying on TV for the millionth time.
As Brody made his big gesture at the end of the movie, showing up to a national funeral director convention to win his lady back, my vision began to blur as my eyes grew heavier and heavier.
Marlon, my thirteen-year-old Pomeranian, curled up on the pillow next to my head. God, this bedding was elite. Money really could buy happiness.Andgood sleep. I needed to check the label on this pillow. Then I could google it and calculate how many hours’ worth of work Brody would have to pay me so I could afford a set for myself.
Just as sleep was within reach, my phone chirped from where it dangled in my fingers. With a groan, I fumbled through my alerts until I noticed one from my bank.
ACCOUNT BALANCE: -$274.22
“Fuck,” I whispered, as I sat up, the blood rushing to my head.
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. Sharplines. 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 withVoguesegment 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 himthat 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.
