Wish Upon a Star Read Online Free Page A

something. I was lucky. I really was.
    I’d seen the real Sam. Now I knew how he truly felt, without any screen, any filter, any contrived social constraints. Sure, I’d startled him with my announcement, and he’d spoken brashly. But that wasn’t really what bothered me.
    What bothered me was, he didn’t come back. He didn’t take a walk around the block to cool off, and then come home to discuss the situation, like a man. Instead, he avoided me, ignored me, treated me as if I were some make-believe monster that would just go away if he squinched his eyes shut and counted to one hundred.
    He didn’t come home.
    The following morning, I called in sick to the Mercer, even though I needed the shift. I needed every penny I could scrounge, now that Concerned Caterers was history.
    I left a message with Amy, something mindless and falsely cheery, sneaked into her voice mail when I knew she was at class. No reason to drag her into the spectacular mess I’d made out of my life. She had enough on her mind, with Justin’s misbehavior, with Derek overseas, with spring semester classes drawing to a close.
    I stared at the phone all day on Thursday, all Thursday night, willing Sam to call.
    I’d handled things badly. Poor Sam had had a lousy day—he thought he’d settled the Lindstrom case only to find out that the damn thing was still going to trial. He’d had a couple of beers; he was angry about the baseball game. I hadn’t thought out my announcement. I should have cushioned the news for him.
    Full of remorse, I finally tried to reach him at his office on Friday. His secretary picked up, and clouds of butterflies swarmed in my belly, worse than any audition jitters I’d ever experienced. “One moment please,” she said with a formality that terrified me. “Let me see if he’s in his office.” I caught my breath, ready to apologize to Sam for dropping such momentous news in his lap without warning, ready to ask him to come home, to talk things through. “I’m sorry,” the secretary said a minute later, so smoothly that I knew she was lying. “He’s stepped away from his desk.”
    Stepped away. Yeah, right. Just like he’d stepped away on Wednesday night.
    I didn’t leave a message.
    Friday night, I pictured him hanging out with his friends, drinking beer, playing pool. He was probably crashing on someone’s couch, reliving his carefree college days, pretending he was still in Alpha Beta Whatever. Could he really be seven years older than I was? I got angrier and angrier as I stared at mindless TV. I couldn’t bring myself to climb the stairs to our bedroom. Couldn’t imagine sleeping in our rumpled king-size bed.
    The thing was, I felt like I’d done all this before. Not the “I’m pregnant” stuff—that was a new one for me. But the “I need to get this guy to pay attention to me” stuff. The “why won’t he call me, when I desperately want to talk to him” stuff. The “I’ll change my life around, do whatever it takes to make this relationship work” stuff.
    That’s just who I was. Having a boyfriend was important to me—it made me feel, I don’t know, centered. Complete. Balanced. I always had a boyfriend. Even if he wasn’t the sort of guy that Amy approved of, even if he turned out not to be right for me…
    The guys in my life had shaped who I was, starting way back in junior high, when I tried out for the school play because I had a crush on the guy who was a shoo-in for the lead. I never would have discovered my love of acting, if it hadn’t been for Corey… Corey… I couldn’t remember his last name. But I would never forget that adrenaline-charged rush of excitement when he gave me a lanyard to wear all of eighth grade spring. At least, until he ended up with his own crush, on Alicia Gold. Her last name I remembered. Corey had asked for his lanyard back so that he could give it to Alicia.
    And I remembered Amy smoothing my hair while I sobbed out my frustration. Amy, telling