1 Chapter 1

Prologue

Packing up his duffel and backpack—T-shirts, jeans, a couple of nice button-downs—he told himself over and over again that he was not running away. Anyway, at eighteen you couldn’t really call it running away, could you? He was practically an adult now. He had had enough of his mother. He’d tolerated it for years—doing what she wanted him to do, saying what she wanted him to say, never having his own mind. He hated himself for being the spineless dick that he was.

Yes, he’d had enough of being the sweet little boy his mother had always wanted him to be, her sweet Jessie. His mother had always wanted a daughter as her second-born, his aunt had once told him, so much so that his parents were at a loss on what to name him when he was born, so certain they were going to have a girl.

Huh. At least his mother didn’t dress him up as one and for that he was forever thankful. He looked girly enough as it was.

Sometimes he wished he could be like his big brother, Josh, who was the real son, the monkey in the family.

Josh could do whatever he wanted, getting into all sorts of pranks, coming back home all dirty and muddy, yet somehow always managed to get into their parents’, their mother’s, good books, whereas Jesse could never get away with anything like that. He was the one who always ended up playing with the girl cousins, entertaining them, singing, telling stories, playing the piano. He tried to get into sports while in high school, was in the baseball club for a while, but somehow ended up becoming one of the bell guards in the cheerleading squad instead. He was in the drama club as well and he loved that. He loved acting and he wanted, dreamed of, pursued a career in it but his mother wouldn’t hear of it, saying that real men didn’t do acting. Acting was for girls and sissies. Hello? Newsflash, Momma, I am yoursweet little Jessie, remember?

Things had become unbearable in the past few months. His mother hardly spoke to him, Dad and Josh were not taking sides, and Jesse felt so stifled by it all, so alone. He had no best friends to speak of, well, except for Charlie of course, his special friend that his mother knew nothing about, but even Charlie had left him for a career in music. There really was no one to talk to and Jesse was afraid he was going to have a breakdown if he stayed on.

They’d had another huge fight last night when his mother had brought home application papers for UT. She wanted him to apply for courses that he had absolutely zero interest in and things had come to a head when she said that she wanted him to live at home and travel daily to school since UT wasn’t that far. She looked stunned when Jesse had simply left the room, slamming the door shut behind him. He had to leave, there was no other way.

Looking at his childhood room for the last time, he felt warmth prickling at the back of his eyes. In spite of everything, he still loved his mother. But he had to do this for his own sanity and self-respect; he had to live his own dreams and prove to his mother that he could be his own person.

Forgive me, Momma. 1

“C’mon, Eliot!” Jesse’s on the phone with his good-for-nothing agent who has never managed to get him anything better than being a fucking extra. It’s lunchtime. He’s at a payphone outside the set of the TV series he’s currently working on, as an extra of course, and he’s at the end of his tether what with there being no other job in sight for him.

Jesse rubs the back of his neck. Things have turned from bad to worse since his so-called boyfriend dumped him a month ago. Max had simply walked out one day and left Jesse high and dry without enough money to pay for the apartment they’d rented together.

The landlord has been hounding him for the rent money, saying that Jesse has to vacate the place unless he pays for another month. Jesse cringes at the thought of what he has in his wallet. There are the paychecks from his job as an extra-cum-PA and the part-time work that he’s been doing at a fast food joint, but they don’t even begin to cover the high cost of living in Hollywood. It wasn’t so bad when Max was there to help share the financial burden, but now? Jesse is so frustrated that he just wants to scream and lash out at someone, anyone—Max, his agent, the landlord.