Free So Much for My Happy Ending by Kyra Davis Page A

“You’re looking at a fully licensed CPA.”
    â€œYou’re shittin’ me.”
    â€œNo, I’m not kidding you. It was my dad’s idea. I always had a good head for numbers and I’ve been doin’ his taxes since I was sixteen, so he figured, ‘boy should be an accountant.’ I got my degree at Sac State. I made the dean’s list and everything.”
    Now even Allie looked worried.
    â€œAfter I took the exams I went on all these interviews and I got a couple of good job offers for some serious bucks.”
    â€œIs that CPA-speak for a competitive salary?”
    â€œSomething like that. I could have had a good income, decent hours, benefits and as much job security as you can get nowadays. But the more I thought about it, the more down I got. It’s not that I don’t want to have the money and weekends off, but if I have to choose, and let’s face it—” he shook a fry at me “—we all gotta choose, I’d rather be poor and performing. So I got another certification, this time as a personal trainer. Now I work part-time for shitty wages and play full-time for really shitty wages. So, after giving up all that security, I am going to stuff my guitar in some storage unit all because some guys in my band are better than me? Fuck that. I’m strumming that motherfucker until I get to the level I wanna be at.”
    Allie had scooted over to the edge of the booth farthest from him; I knew she hadn’t gotten over the accountant thing. I was more shocked by the philosophy behind his lifestyle. “What if…” I faltered, not even wanting to utter the words on the off chance my question hadn’t occurred to him. “What if you fail?”
    â€œI can’t fail. I’ve already succeeded.”
    â€œBut you just said you weren’t making any money.”
    â€œIt’s not about the money. I’ve succeeded because I’m pursuing my dreams, man. And even if I never cut a record with Maverick I still got that. I’m never gonna do that ‘what if’ shit. I’m fucking living the ‘what if’ right now.”
    I stared at him in bewilderment. “What planet did you say you were from again?”
    â€œDidn’t you read the book, babe? We’re all from Mars.”

FIVE
    F ive weeks had passed since that late-night dinner with Allie and Jeremiah. This meant there were only three weeks before D-day. I tried to breathe out the stress as I sorted through the ecru-colored envelopes that had arrived the day before. I placed the acceptances and the rejections in separate piles on the empty seat next to me on the Muni train. I had read in Modern Bride that every bride should designate a special place to work on her wedding planning. I looked around me and studied the teenager with the pink-and-green Mohawk sitting in front of an elderly woman clutching a grocery bag full of not-so-fresh fish. I might be able to find a less smelly special place if I had even a second of spare time. Thanks to the holidays and an upcoming inventory count, I had been able to take all of two days off in the last month, and if that wasn’t enough to make wedding planning difficult I was also in the process of moving. One of Tad’s acquaintances was relocating to San Luis Obispo and he was renting his Laurel Heights home to us for the low-low price of twenty-five hundred dollars a month. It wasn’t a horrible rent considering the area and the fact that it was a house instead of an apartment, but it was still a big change from the eleven-hundred-dollar rent I was used to paying. I had thought that moving in with Tad would have been more of a monumental occurrence. Since the first night—he had made me a spectacular dinner that we had eaten picnic style while sitting amongst the large cardboard boxes on the dining-room floor—we had been working so much that it didn’t feel like I was seeing him any