Page 2 of Broken Romeo

She shakes her head and pulls up her phone, opening her bank app. “I don’t have a lot I can loan you, but a couple hundred might help—”

“I’m not taking your money, Jill.”

“But we’re going to be evicted!”

“We aren’t going to be anything.” I move past her, avoiding her eyes. I really don’t want to have this conversation with her right now. Not when I have to leave in five minutes and my nerves are already shot to hell. I grab the dirty dishes from the bin and begin loading the dishwasher. “I will be evicted.”

She follows on the backs of my heels, and I pray for a customer to interrupt so that we don’t have to do this now—here.

“Kate, no. If you go, I go. We can find a cheaper place. Maybe out in Bay Ridge? The commute to work will be a bitch, but if we can save—”

“No,” I say and spin to face her.

Her green eyes go wide from my hard tone, but I don’t care. Just because my dreams aren’t panning out doesn’t mean she should quit hers.

“You don’t understand, Jill. If I don’t get this part today, I’m going home to Indiana.”

“You know...” Jill bites the inside of her cheek in thought. “Maybe that’s not a bad idea. You go to Indiana; I’ll visit my parents for a month in New Jersey. We could Airbnb the place again for way more than our rent and get Gray-Faced Greene off your back. Then, when we’ve both saved a little, we could come back—”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say, shaking my head. I don’t state the obvious—which is that it’s illegal to Airbnb our place, and Greene caught us the last time we did it. I take a deep breath, stealing a glance at my phone.

Three minutes.

I have to leave in three minutes for the most important audition of my life.

“If I don’t get this part today, we need to start interviewing new roommates for you. I’ll work something out with Ms. Greene. A payment plan or something, so that she doesn’t boot you from the apartment, too.”

The fact that I’ve been thinking this through for a couple weeks, preparing for this talk with Jill, doesn’t make it any easier. My throat feels clogged like the shitty drainpipe in our shower, and a lone tear manages to spill down my cheek. I swipe it away with the back of my hand, grateful that Jill knows me well enough to ignore it.

“I can’t keep living like this,” I admit. “I eat ramen every night because it’s all I can afford. I work constantly, rushing from double shifts here to auditions and rehearsals. If I’m lucky, I perform until eleven. Then wake up at five to start it all again. Most nights, I can’t sleep because I lay awake freaking out about how much debt I’m in.”

I gulp back the tennis ball lodged in my throat. “I think I need to face it… I’m probably never going to make it as a professional actress. I can barely get parts in the ensemble in summer stock, let alone something here in New York on Broadway.”

Jill grabs my hand and gives my fingers a gentle squeeze. “Don’t say that.”

“Even if it’s true?”

“It’s not true. You’re a great actress.”

“So are a lot of people.”

Jill inclines her chin in a deliberate gesture, rife with false bravado. I recognize it easily because I, myself, have done it more than once.

“Then you’ll just have to knock them dead at today’s audition.” She leans in, her voice barely above a whisper. “I know you will. You were the most talented actress in your program.”

That was before Holden ruined everything.

Just the mention of college sends a spike of icy grief twisting through my heart.

I grab the second tray of dirty dishes and cross to the sink to busy myself washing them.

I don’t like thinking about undergrad. It’s far too knotted in the tangled ball of yarn that is Holden James Dorsey. Every good memory I have is associated with him… and every bad one.

No. ‘Bad’ doesn’t do it justice. ‘Bad’ doesn’t even begin to cover the ways he used me, broke my heart, and betrayed me. My stomach clenches as the heartbreak gives way to bitterness. It rushes through my veins, like an angry river through a broken dam. The emotion is a relief, and I relax into the rage.

Anger is better than regret; it’s better than the sad, empty hole I feel when I think about Holden. Bitterness and resentment are my shield and I’ll cling to it, clutch it, and hide behind it for as long as I need to in order to move on from the devastation he caused me.

That’s all the more reason I need to get this part. To show him, and myself, that he didn’t ruin me. That I came back better than ever.

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