Twenty-five. College educated. There’s a way out of this, and you’re going to find it.

The thing to do is keep it simple. Take it a step at a time. Maybe Olivia is right. Start a diet. Then join a gym. Then get the legs waxed and, you know, reclaim the self.

I take a bigger sip from my hand-blown margarita glass, thinking it wasn’t so long ago that I had a decent body. Eighteen months ago I was that wide-eyed bride, and I’d worked hard to look magnificent for the wedding. Slim, toned, fit. Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

The wedding photos never made it into an album. I still have the photos, though, in a big brown mailing envelope, a stack of glossy photos that will never get looked at, a stack of photos of a bride and groom laughing, smiling, photos that should have been cherished but won’t be.

I wish I’d known then that it wasn’t going to last. I wish I’d known what he was thinking. Feeling.

Funny, when I look at the photos now, especially the one where we’re dancing—-our first dance—Jean-Marc’s unhappiness is so obvious. If you look at his face, you can see it there in his eyes. If you know Jean-Marc, you can see the emptiness behind the smile, the distance there. He’s not actually smiling. He’s already detached himself.

He’s already divorcing me.

“Another drink?” Aimee, Olivia’s friend, director of fund-raising for the Met Museum, is gesturing to me and my now nearly empty glass.

I look up at her, but I don’t see Aimee; I see Jean-Marc, and we’re on our honeymoon in the South of France.

We’re doing everything big, everything splashy, and I’m standing in the doorway of our suite’s living room, wearing a Victoria’s Secret pink lace teddy and not much else (but the hair’s done, lots of sexy tousled curls, and flawless makeup). I’m smiling at him even as I try not to cry.

You don’t like this?

It’s fine.

You don’t want this?

You look great.

But you don’t want me.

I’m just not in the mood.

It’s our honeymoon, Jean-Marc.

Holly, I can’t.

Why not?

He says nothing. Why not? I shout.

Because I don’t love you that way.

I drain the rest of my hand-shaken fresh-fruit-juice margarita. Tequila’s good. It works. “One more,” I say to Aimee, blinking hard, refusing to cry, refusing to think about the disaster honeymoon, refusing to think about the pile of sexy lingerie that never got worn, refusing to accept that I own more Rosenthal than common sense.

That way? What the hell does that way mean?

Touching my tongue to the edge of the salt-rimmed glass, I’m suddenly hugely grateful for tequila and lime juice and mariachi bands. California would be nothing without Mexico.

Chapter Two

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Two strong margaritas and three hours later, I don’t think I can drive home, even if it’s only fifteen minutes across town. I have this thing about driving in San Francisco as it is (scary steep hills, runaway cable cars, foreign tourists snapping photos, unaware that I’m behind the wheel), and I take a cab home instead of my own car.

The cab drops me off in front of my building, the sun having disappeared sometime when I was in the bar, leaving my street of Victorians dark. I check the mail. Nothing good.

I head on up the front steps to the house, needing to enter the front door to reach my door. The owner of the house, Cindy Lee, rented me the apartment after the most exhausting background check ever. But then, as she explained to me later, she lives above me, so she has to be careful. She needs a good, quiet tenant because she often works at home, and fortunately my background check said I was good and quiet, so I got the apartment.