Page 3 of If the World Was Ending

Leandra took so long to answer he double-checked that he actually hit send on the text.

Leandra:

Sure. I can do everything.

At twenty-five, Hunter wasn’t the most experienced with women. Leandra was only his second real girlfriend, but he knew that wasn’t a good response. He thought about what to say to defuse the situation. It seemed like lately, no matter what he did, Leandra wasn’t thrilled.

After almost half an hour, he finally wrote her back.

Sorry babe. I’ll make it up to you.

She didn’t respond.

The day didn’t get better after that. His agent called and told him he didn’t get a call back for a two-episode guest role. According to the show, he wasn’t ethnically diverse enough, which made Hunter want to punch a wall. Hunter had been adopted, so his parents’ ethnicity—which was French Canadian and Swedish for his dad and Scottish and Korean for his mom—didn’t apply to him. But he had done one of those ancestry swab tests when he’d turned eighteen and found out he was a quarter Japanese, sixty percent British, five percent Jamaican, and ten percent Norwegian. He was the fucking United Nations of ethnicity, and yet casting agents constantly told him he wasn’t enough of something or too much of something else.

Leandra came home at seven, and her mood was just as salty as it was in their text conversation. She dropped the groceries on the counter in the kitchen and muttered, “I need a shower. Estelle had a particularly rough day. I blame the earthquakes and the winds.”

Leandra was a nurse who had recently left her hospital job to become a private nurse for an eighty-six-year-old former actress with dementia. She rotated shifts with two other nurses hired by Estelle’s son. She also taught yoga at a West Hollywood gym on weekends. Hunter thanked her for the groceries, then silently cooked the fajitas as Leandra showered and changed.

When she re-entered the kitchen, her damp light brown hair was twisted in a top knot, and her face was free of makeup. She didn’t make eye contact with Hunter.

“Warm the tortillas,” she muttered and then took the wooden spatula from him and began shoving the vegetables around in the skillet as if they had personally wronged her.

“Look, you need more shifts at the restaurant,” Leandra told him as they ate at their small high-top table in the dining room. She tucked a wayward stand of hair behind her ear and glared at him. “The roles aren’t coming.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Hunter said, trying not to sound defensive. “I’ll ask for more shifts.”

“Day shifts. Aren’t they always hurting for waiters for day shifts?”

Hunter tried not to frown. “Yeah, but I need my days free for auditions.”

“Auditions for roles you aren’t getting?” Leandra said. Ouch. Hunter felt that like a slap. Her eyes softened just a little. “Okay, look. Can you take some day shifts just for this month? We’re behind on bills. Just take a few until we catch up. I’m working my ass off.”

She was, he knew it. But Leandra told him she loved yoga and caring for Estelle was a much more rewarding job than the grueling shifts at the hospital. She said she liked Estelle’s son, who also lived in the Malibu house, and Estelle was delightful in her lucid moments. It was tough work, but Leandra was doing what she loved. But Hunter didn’t dream of being a waiter. Still, he mumbled, “Fine. Yeah.”

Then he shoved the fajita into his mouth to avoid saying anything else. Leandra nodded, and Hunter assumed she was content with that answer, but she stared at him as she chewed, and suddenly Hunter wasn’t sure what she was thinking. He was, in general, horrible at reading people. His anxiety created this white noise in his brain that blocked out rational thought sometimes—not to mention the ability to assess a situation clearly. He had a prescription for meds but no insurance or money to fill it. So, he’d been raw dogging it since he graduated from the Acting Program at UCLA Extension two years ago.

“Cass invited me over tonight. Girls’ night.”

“Oh. Okay.” What else was he going to say? Stay here and watch TV with me? Let’s doomscroll Instagram together? Because even though they hadn’t seen each other much in the last month, he hadn’t planned anything more than dinner for tonight.

“I won’t be late.”

“No worries.”

He watched silently as Leandra grabbed their now empty plates, along with her phone that had been on the table, before disappearing into the kitchen.

At one in the morning, Hunter woke up on the couch, a rerun of Law & Order playing on the TV, and realized Leandra’s version of “not late” and his were apparently not the same… anymore.

He debated calling her to check in when he heard a loud crack outside, followed by a hideous crunching sound.

Chapter 2

You think I have ambulance money?

Colby finished his set to a decent applause. Probably the biggest round of applause of the night, and so he couldn’t complain. That made it worth the gas to get all the way out to the Valley for this musical open mic night at a bar he’d never heard of until he saw an ad online.

As he walked to the table where his best friend waited, the MC said. “Thank you, Colby Keaton, for closing out our live music night.” And then continued to thank the other musicians who had been on the stage tonight.