Anthony is stuck in a rut, so he's going for his backup plan: Kai is the only reason he's putting up with Shayla like a bad joke...

Anthony is stuck in a rut, so he's going for his backup plan: Kai is the only reason he's putting up with Shayla like a bad joke...

Anthony never liked backup plans. To him, they were for people who didn’t believe in themselves. And he believed. He believed when he packed up his life and moved to the city with nothing but a camera, a hard drive full of scripts, and a head full of dreams. He believed when he worked dead-end gigs just to afford time on set. He believed when the rejection emails came, one after the other, until his inbox looked more like a graveyard than an opportunity.

But belief doesn’t pay rent. And when his savings hit zero, when his credit card started screaming at him, when the weight of his failures crushed his lungs every time he woke up, he did the one thing he swore he never would.

He went with the backup plan.

Shayla.

Shayla, with her perfect apartment and her perfect little life. Shayla, who never understood why Anthony tortured himself chasing a dream that refused to love him back. She was stable, predictable—comfortable in all the ways he wasn’t.

He told himself that was enough.

But the truth was, the only reason he was still putting up with her was Kai.

Kai, who had been there long before Shayla. Kai, who had been his best friend since college, who had believed in him even when he didn’t. Kai, who had seen him at his worst and never turned away.

If Shayla was a bad joke, Kai was the punchline—the one thing that made it all bearable.

Because Shayla had money, but Kai had faith.

And right now, faith was the only thing keeping Anthony from falling apart.

They met in secret. Not in a scandalous way—nothing about it was romantic, not in the way Shayla would assume if she ever found out. No, it was something deeper, something heavier.

They’d meet on the rooftop of Kai’s apartment, the city stretching out beneath them, the lights flickering like lost stars. Kai would bring cheap beer, Anthony would bring his latest idea, and for a few stolen hours, it felt like everything might still be okay.

“She doesn’t get it, man,” Anthony said one night, the words slurring slightly. “She wants me to give up. Get a real job. Be normal.”

Kai took a slow sip of his drink. “And what do you want?”

Anthony didn’t answer. Because he didn’t know anymore.

Kai sighed, running a hand through his dark curls. “Look, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. But if you’re waiting for someone to give you permission to leave, it’s not gonna be me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Because leaving Shayla meant losing the only safety net he had left.

And losing Shayla meant losing Kai.

Because, for reasons Anthony couldn’t quite explain, Kai was still part of Shayla’s world in ways Anthony wasn’t. They’d known each other longer, had mutual friends, ties that went deeper than Anthony’s tenuous grip on the situation. If he walked away now, he’d be walking away from both of them.

So he stayed.

And every day, it felt a little more like drowning.

The worst part?

He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to be saved.