I Might Be in Trouble

by Daniel Aleman

Genres: Hispanic & Latino

Synopsis

A suspenseful dark comedy about a struggling writer who wakes up to find his date from the night before dead—and must then decide how far he’s willing to go to spin the event into his next big book: "Prepare to gasp out loud, cringe, cackle, and cry" (Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers).

A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend, and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a resounding success, which made the publication of his second book—a total flop—all the more devastating. Now, David is single, lonely, and desperately trying to come up with the next great idea for his third manuscript, one that will redeem him in the eyes of readers, reviewers, the entire publishing world…and maybe even his ex-boyfriend.
 
But good ideas are hard to come by, and the mounting pressure of a near-empty bank account isn’t helping. When David connects with a sexy stranger on a dating app, he figures a wild night out in New York City may be just what he needs to find inspiration. Lucky for him, his date turns out to be handsome, confident, and wealthy, not to mention the perfect distraction from yet another evening staring at a blank screen.
 
After one of the best nights of his life, David wakes up hungover but giddy—only to find prince charming dead next to him in bed. Horrified, completely confused, and suddenly faced with the implausible-but-somehow-plausible idea that he may have actually killed his date, David calls the only person he can trust in a moment of crisis: his literary agent, Stacey.

Together, David and Stacey must untangle the events of the previous night, cover their tracks, and spin the entire misadventure into David’s career-defining novel—if only they can figure out what to do with the body first.

Release date: December 3, 2024

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

An author much younger and wiser than I am now once wrote, My legs are my favorite part of my body, because they take me anywhere I want to go.

That’s how it all began—with that one sentence scribbled across the back of a receipt for a BLT and a Diet Coke. Those eighteen words turned into eighty thousand, which turned into a book deal, which turned into the start of what should’ve been an incredible career. The writer in question was… well, me, except I no longer feel like him. I’m no longer the kid who had big dreams of becoming a published author, being on bestseller lists, and seeing the cover of his book staring back at him through bookstore windows all over the city.

Every single one of those things did become a reality, but I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes dreams aren’t everything you’d made them out to be. Now, all I have is the memory of the words that got me further than I ever thought I would go, and these same old legs, which cramp up a lot more than they used to.

As I stare down at my thighs, I don’t feel the strength I once did. I don’t feel the urge to get out there, and chase after my dreams, and make things happen. I see nothing but a faded stain on my khakis that survived the wash—ketchup, most likely—and a slight trembling motion that only gets worse when I sneak a glance at the time on the dashboard and realize it’s almost seven.

“Uh… isn’t there a faster route we could take?” I ask the Uber driver.

“Sorry, buddy,” he replies. “Map says we’re already on the fastest one.”

I lean my head back, letting out a long breath as I stare out the window at the red lights of cars braking all around us. I hate first dates. Hate them. I hate the back-and-forth on the apps; hate the first encounter when you don’t know if you should go for a hug, or a handshake, or a polite nod; hate the boring questions of where you’re from, and what you do for a living, and what you enjoy doing in your free time. Tonight, though, I mostly hate the anxiety of being late.

“Don’t worry,” the driver says to me. “We just gotta get through the next couple intersections. I’ll get you there in no time.”

Trying to keep busy, I open the camera app on my phone so I can take one more look at my hair. I swear, it always refuses to behave right before important events. If only anyone had seen me yesterday—I spent the entire day inside my apartment and my hair looked glorious, but tonight it’s awfully poofy, as if I’d blow-dried it to add volume in all the wrong places.

I’m doing my best to flatten it, not shying away from using a bit of spit where needed, when the driver clears his throat.

“We’re here.”

“Damn,” I say, my eyes still glued to my phone screen. I’m pretty sure I’ve only made my hair worse, and now I desperately need to look at myself in an actual mirror.

“Are you… getting out? I have another ride waiting.”

“Sorry.” I lower my phone. “Could you just… move the rearview mirror a tiny bit?”

“What?”

“The mirror. I need it real quick.”

Staring at the driver from behind, I can tell he’s frowning, but there’s hardly any point in explaining what I mean—this will only take a second. I lean forward, sneaking into the gap between the front seats so I can get closer.

“Whoa, buddy, what are you doing?” he says, cowering back against the side of the car.

“I just gotta—”

“Get out!”

Flinching, I move back. I open the car door, and I’ve barely had a chance to step onto the sidewalk before he starts pulling away, the tires screeching as he drives off.

“I’ll give you five stars!” I shout after him, but it’s probably too late. I don’t think he heard me.

With no time to waste, I turn around and walk straight toward a cloud of smoke that’s coming from a group of women wearing high heels and expensive coats. I hold my breath briefly to inhale as little of the smoke as possible, and then I make my way through a set of glass doors.

I didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this. For a place called the glory hole (all lowercase), this is a lot classier than I thought. Golden candlelight everywhere, sleek high-top tables, and a fancy bar covered in crystal, behind which two obscenely good-looking servers are standing.

I spot my date sitting right in the middle of the room. Making one final attempt to flatten my hair, I approach him with as much confidence as I can muster.

“Shane?”

He looks up, and my first thought is yes. He’s hot. Too hot for my own good, really. Caramel brown eyes, strong jaw, shiny blond hair—the kind you could run a brush through once and would end up looking absolutely perfect. As if I wasn’t feeling self-conscious enough already.

“Hey,” he says, smiling at me from the corner of his mouth. “Dave, right?”

“David,” I correct him. “I’ve never thought of myself as cool enough to be able to pull off ‘Dave.’”

I let out a small laugh, but he frowns in response. Noted—no more jokes. At least not until I’ve figured out his sense of humor.

“Sorry I’m late,” I say as I take a seat across the table from him. “Traffic was horrible.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I barely just walked in the door myself.”

“I gotta say, you actually look like your photos—which is honestly a relief these days.” Damn it. There goes another joke—a half joke, though. Maybe this one will work better.

“Yeah, thanks, man.”

He looks over my shoulder, probably trying to see where our server’s gone, but the brief silence that falls between us is too much for me to bear.

“Well… do I look like my photos?” I blurt out, smiling at him in what I hope will come across as a playful way.

He narrows his eyes, searching my face. “Yeah,” he says, nodding slightly. “For the most part.”

For the most part. Fuck, I need a drink.

I reach for the menu. “What are we having?”

When the server comes, we order overpriced cocktails, which makes me hope that Shane is planning to get the bill at the end of the night. It was he who picked this place, and twenty-dollar cocktails are exactly the type of thing I promised myself I would cut back on. Still, when we look down to find that we’ve gone through our first round a little too fast, I’m quick to flag down our waiter and order another. Sometimes I just need a little alcohol to get me feeling more chatty.

“So,” I say once we’re halfway through our second drink. Or maybe it’s the third—they’re strong enough that I’m starting to lose count. “You’re in tech, right?”

“Tech sales.”

“What’s the difference?”

Shane leans forward, setting his elbows on the table. “Well… tech people create the technology. I just sell it.”

“Yeah. That makes sense.”

“How about you?” he asks me. “What do you do?”

I take a sip of my cocktail. “I’m a writer.”

“But, like… what’s your actual job?”

“I… write books.”

Shane frowns. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So, what, you wake up in the morning and… write?”

“That’s… kinda what full-time writers are meant to do, yeah. But I’m between projects at the moment.”

“Interesting,” Shane says in a way that tells me he doesn’t think it’s interesting at all. “Have you written anything I might’ve heard of?”

Only one of the top-selling debut novels of 2021, I almost reply. Instead, I shrug a little and say, “Maybe. You might recognize my first book if you saw it. We got pretty good coverage for it—big displays in bookstores and everything.”

“Oh, I don’t spend much time in bookstores,” he replies. “I’m more of a gym type of guy.”

“Hmm. I figured you would be.”

“Well, thank you.”

When I meet his eyes, he’s smiling. He has taken my comment as a compliment, which is probably a good thing. And, I mean, he does have a great body. While he tells me about how he wakes up at five every morning to hit the gym before work, I notice that the top buttons of his shirt are undone, revealing a smooth, golden chest.

I should be trying harder. I should be focusing on being nice, and listening to him, and making a solid attempt at finding some common ground. God knows I’ve been on more than one bad first date lately, so I could really use a meaningful connection for once. But while Shane continues his monologue, and I keep drinking sips of my cocktail, feeling the alcohol rush to my head, I simply can’t help it: my mind starts to wander.

Not now, I say to myself. Leave me alone.

The thought of Jeremy always has a way of sneaking into my head—especially when I least want it to. It lingers somewhere in the background during every single date I go on. It rushes through my veins when I walk past some corners in the city or get off at certain subway stops. It’s with me in the shower, while I’m sitting on the couch by myself watching television, and when I wake up every morning.

With Jeremy, there were no awkward silences, no misunderstood jokes, no need for defensiveness. I guess it’s only natural I would compare every guy to him (but, actually, Jeremy can go fuck himself). He was the best sex I’ve ever had (seriously—he can go straight to hell). But with him, it wasn’t only about the physical connection. It was about the way he looked at me on our first date, the way he held my hand over the table while we were sitting inside that hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the East Village he loved so much, and the way he said, “You’re exactly who I hoped you would be.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You’re the kind of person I’ve been looking for.”

It was the way he kept ordering one round of vodka sodas with a slice of orange after the other, even as the hours went by and the restaurant emptied around us. It was the way a deep sadness flooded my chest when I realized the date was coming to an end, and the fact that he made it vanish altogether when he asked if I wanted to go to a different bar so we could keep talking. It was the way I leaned over in my stool and undid the top button of his shirt just because I could, and the way he touched me as if he’d known me for years and not hours—a squeeze of my thigh, a graze of my arm, a gentle brush of my face.

And then, at the end of the night, the way he kissed me softly and asked the most heart-stopping question I have ever heard. Can I see you again tomorrow?

Maybe no one else stands a chance. Maybe, no matter how many first dates I go on, it’s all pointless, because no one will ever come close to Jeremy. But I still sit here, drinking cocktails I can’t afford and listening to details about a weight-lifting routine I couldn’t possibly care less about, hoping to sense a spark between me and Shane. Hoping to feel something—anything.

“Anyway,” he says after a while, readjusting the collar of his shirt. He must’ve become aware that he went on a bit longer than he should have, because he sets his elbows back down over the table and asks, “Why don’t you tell me more about your books?”

I give him a small smile. “Well, I guess… the first one did really well.” Saying that The Millers did “really well” might be an understatement, but sometimes it’s hard for me to talk about it without feeling like I’m bragging.

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about this family. At the beginning of the book, the characters seem like your average, all-American, next-door-neighbor kind of people. But then you start to see the ways in which each of them is broken—and the ways in which they’re all complicit in the others’ brokenness. You could say it’s an exploration of how family shapes us, for better or for worse.” A raw, unfiltered glimpse into the psyche of the modern American family, the New York Times called it. But I don’t say that.

“Wow,” Shane says. His eyes are glazed over, which is probably an effect of the alcohol. Then again, I could just be boring him to death.

“My second book came out last year,” I add.

“Oh. A sequel?”

“No, no. It’s a standalone novel.”

“Another big success, I bet.”

I let out a laugh. “Yeah,” I say, staring down at my near-empty glass. “It sure is.”

There isn’t much more to say about it. It’s not like I’m gonna sit here and explain what a major flop Walking Home was. I’m not about to tell Shane about the awful reviews, or the disappointing sales numbers, or the lack of media coverage. I’m here because I need to have a fun night for a change, because I want to get to know this ridiculously good-looking guy, and because I want to feel a connection. The last thing I should be doing is turning this into a pity party. I’m meant to be fun, and likeable, and easygoing. I’m meant to be the kind of guy you’d want to go out with again, the kind you might just see yourself settling down with.

When I meet his eyes again, there’s still that same glossiness to them, but there are other things, too—curiosity, wonder, eagerness. His bottom lip trembles slightly, and I just know he’s dying to say something. That’s so impressive, perhaps. Or, You’re incredible. I want to know everything about you. All of them things Jeremy once said to me, all of them things I’ve been aching to hear again since we broke up last year.

I lean toward Shane, watching as he draws in a deep breath—watching as he licks his lips, preparing to speak the words he’s itching to get off his chest.

And then he says, “You wanna get out of here?”

“Uh… where do you want to go?”

“We could go somewhere private and fuck?”

I can’t help myself—I roll my eyes. I just want to make sure he knows for one second that I find his proposition ridiculous, that I’m not as easy as that, that I do possess at least an ounce of self-respect. I reach for my glass, take a big gulp to finish my drink, and set it back down with a bang that’s louder than I’d intended.

I lift my eyebrows at him. “Your place or mine?”

It takes me about two seconds to know this isn’t going to be good sex—the two seconds after he slides into me, which is when I realize he’s not gonna give me any time to adjust, not gonna offer me any courtesy. He’s just gonna go for it.

“Oh, God,” he yells out. “I’m inside you!”

I guess he’s one of those. And I don’t just mean a screamer—he’s one of those dominant guys who thinks he’s the man simply because he’s a top, and who would never, ever let anyone near his own ass.

“You’re mine! I’m inside you!”

“Yeah, you are,” I yell back, because what else am I meant to do? Lie here quietly while he rails me? “You’re inside me!”

“I am, baby,” he says. “Fuck, yes, I am.”

My apartment is tiny. I can see all of it from here—the kitchenette, the couch, the desk where I do most of my writing. When I lived with Jeremy, we had a two-bedroom on the Upper East Side, but now I live in a studio—not that you would know it’s a studio from the amount of money I pay every month. I should’ve probably looked for a better deal, but when I found the listing for this second-floor unit in a brownstone, I was desperate to sign a lease—any lease. I don’t think I could’ve spent a second longer than I did inside our old apartment. I needed to get away from the memories, from the heartbreak, from the silence.

Leave me alone! I tell my intrusive thoughts for the second time tonight. I’m busy.

Shane lets out a loud grunt as he bangs his body against mine.

“Do you like that big cock?”

“Oh, I love it,” I say. “It’s so big.”

It’s actually not. But again, what else am I meant to say?

He picks up the pace, which makes the bed creak dangerously underneath us. He’d better not break the frame, because if he does, I’m going to be in the very awkward position of having to ask him to transfer me money. This date has already turned out to be expensive enough as it is. Shane conveniently went to the bathroom just as our waiter brought out the check, which left me with no option but to hand over my credit card and pray it would go through. Breaking my bed and making me buy a new one on top of that would be going a bit too far, though.

“Flip over.”

“What?”

Shane wipes sweat off his forehead. “I wanna fuck you doggy style.”

Ugh, I hate doggy style. Couldn’t even tell you why—I just do. Still, I flip over and get on all fours so he can do his thing.

I’m totally okay with this, by the way. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t into it, at least a little bit. And, honestly, it’s probably better this way—now that I’m not facing Shane, he could be anyone. I might even be able to fool myself into imagining he’s Jere—no. We’re not going there. But he could certainly be one of the other guys I’ve dated in the past year. One of the nice ones. One of the ones I actually liked, and hoped to go on a second date with, and felt heartbroken over when they stopped answering texts.

“Oh, baby, you feel amazing!”

Okay, never mind. It’s gonna be hard to imagine he’s someone else.

“Yeah?” I answer. “Give it to me!”

By the time he finishes, we’re both exhausted. We lie side by side on the bed, breathing heavily and staring up at the ceiling. I don’t think either of us even says anything. I don’t remember discussing whether he should sleep here or go home, don’t remember telling him I need to be up early tomorrow.

All I know is that the feeling of someone lying next to me is comforting, so I cozy up to him and hold on tight to my pillow. The alcohol is swirling inside my head, making me tired and foggy. Right here and now, everything feels okay—everything feels exactly as it should, and for that I am grateful. It isn’t until the moments right before I drift off to sleep that I start to remember.

I remember that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do this anymore. No more sleeping around, no more wasting my time with men who aren’t right for me. I promised I would stop pursuing people and things and situations that led to me feeling like shit in the end. I said I would focus on what actually matters—writing, getting another book deal, and finding someone who loves me and who I can love back. Someone good. Someone like Jeremy.

The thing is, this is not the first time I’ve said these things to myself, not the first time I’ve given myself an ultimatum.

It certainly won’t be the last.

Emptiness. That’s all I feel in the morning when I wake up.

It’s blissful, really. The soft sunlight filtering through the curtains, the feeling of the silky sheets against my skin, the warmth of a body beside me.

Wait a second.

Fuck.

I roll over to find Shane lying there. He looks unnaturally beautiful while he’s sleeping. His chest is smooth, his muscles strong and defined. Even his hair is perfect—only slightly windswept, as if a gentle breeze and not a full night had gone by.

“Good morning,” I say softly.

Nothing. He keeps sleeping peacefully.

“Shane?” I ask, a little louder this time, but he still doesn’t react.

Perhaps I should let him sleep. I should start getting ready and try again in a bit.

I throw the covers off me, but my attempt at getting out of bed is thwarted the second I lift my head from the pillow. There’s a pounding that seems to have come out of nowhere, making every inch of my brain ache. Those cocktails were definitely strong.

There’s gotta be a bottle of Advil around here—except I have no idea where I last put it. It’s not on the bedside table, but at least there’s my phone. I reach for it, lift the screen up to my face, and—

“Oh, shit.”

It’s almost eight thirty, and I’m supposed to be in Midtown by nine.

“Shane!” I yell. “Shane, you gotta wake up!”

Slowly, he opens his eyes, letting out a low groan. “What time is it?”

“Eight thirty.”

“Oh, shit.” He shoots into a sitting position, rubbing his forehead. “I was supposed to go to the gym this morning. Did my alarm go off?”

“I didn’t hear it,” I say as I sort through the clothes that are scattered around the bed, trying to figure out what is mine and what is his.

“Well…” Shane leans across the bed, stretching out an arm to grab hold of my wrist. “Since we’ve slept in already, do you wanna…”

“What?”

“Go again?”

“No!” I answer, slapping his hand away. “I really do have to go. I have a meeting I can’t miss.”

When my literary agent asks to see me in person, it’s always because she has either very good or very bad news. The thing I’ve learned, however, is that she always likes to tease the good news when she has some. I just heard from Wagner, and I’d love to walk you through some exciting updates, she’ll write. Or, Do you think you’ll be able to make it down to the office tomorrow? You’ll want to hear what I have to say! This time, there was no use of the words love or exciting, no exclamation marks. There was only an email asking if I was free for a meeting, so I already know what type of news I’ll be getting today.

“All right, all right,” Shane says. He gets up and reaches for the shirt he was wearing last night.

While I get ready, throwing on the nicest clothes I can find, I can’t help but feel guilty for snapping at him. I’ve been on the receiving end of this situation plenty of times before, so I’m all too familiar with the hurt of being woken up and thrown out in the morning.

As we’re making our way out of the apartment and down the stairs, there’s no sign that Shane has felt any sort of sting. There’s no resentment, no sadness on his face—only a bit of redness in his eyes and what appears to be an incontrollable need to yawn every two seconds.

“Last night was fun,” he says once we’ve walked out the front door of my building.

“It was.”

“Sex was great,” he adds, giving me a flirty smile.

“It… was?” I clear my throat. “I mean—it was, yeah.”

“So, I guess… I’ll see you soon?”

“Sure. Listen, I’m sorry. I just really have to—”

“Make it to your meeting. No worries. Go.”

I pull at the building door once to make sure it’s locked, and then I turn around and start running down 90th Street without even stopping to wonder whether Shane is watching me or whether I look stupid from behind as I sprint in the direction of Central Park West.

Into the subway station, toward the Downtown platform, and onto the B train I go. My legs shake the entire ride. It’s as if they’re impatient, eager to keep moving, even though I’m already making my way to Stacey’s office as fast as I can.

I get off at 47th Street and rush down Sixth Avenue until I reach the right building. By the time I’ve made it across the brightly lit lobby and into an elevator, it’s fifteen minutes past nine.

“You’re late, darling” is the first thing Stacey says to me.

Her office is so pristine that just standing on the white carpet wearing the same shoes I wore out on the street feels wrong. The tall windows face north, overlooking the skyscrapers along Sixth Avenue, and there’s a shelf covering an entire wall filled with books Stacey has sold throughout her decades-long career as a literary agent, including everything from memoir, to thriller, to commercial and literary fiction—a collection every bit as eclectic as she is.

Other things worth noting: vases filled with white peonies, which are always fresh and blossoming regardless of the time of year, a strong smell of perfume—Chanel No. 5—and Stacey Hixon-Jones herself. She must be in her late fifties or early sixties, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her. In the four years we’ve worked together, she hasn’t changed one bit: same blond hair, same sharp cheekbones, same piercing blue eyes. The only thing that’s different is her glasses, which used to be round but are now cat-eye shaped.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her. “I was—”

“And you’re covered in sweat.”

“I ran all the way from the station. I’m so—”

“Well, there was no need to run. If you were going to be late as it was, you may as well have showed up late and composed. Not late and sweaty.”

I hold her gaze for an instant, not knowing what to say. But then she smiles at me from the corner of her mouth, and I smile back. Stacey may have a peculiar sense of humor, but she is one of the few people I trust with my life—the only person who hasn’t given up on me, and never, ever would.

“Don’t just stand there,” she says. “Take a seat.”

I step forward and do as she says. Somewhere below, a car beeps, and the faint sound of a siren goes by.

“Can I offer you some water?” Stacey asks.

“I’m okay.”

“Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Whiskey?”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Why? Will I need it?”

“I’m not following,” she answers with a small shake of her head.

“You only offer me alcohol when you have bad news.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. I’m just trying to make sure you’re comfortable,” she replies. “But, since you mentioned it… I do have bad news.”

“Tell me. What is it?”

Stacey lets out a long sigh. “Wagner rejected the option.”

She’s talking about the book I submitted to my publisher barely last week. The one they were supposed to fall head over heels for. The one that was meant to be a shoo-in.

I think I’m gonna throw up. I can almost feel the cocktails from last night burning my throat. The pounding headache returns, and I lean forward in my seat, staring down at the shiny surface of the desk while I take deep breaths.

“How about that whiskey now?” Stacey asks.

I shake my head. “Water,” I manage to say. My mouth feels very dry all of a sudden. “I—I need water.”

I’m not sure exactly how it happens, but one second Stacey is making a gesture with her hand, and the next her assistant is inside the office, holding out a glass for me.

“Thank you.” I chug the water in a few big gulps and hand the glass back to him. “Can I get some more?”

It isn’t until I’ve finished my second glass that I’m able to think more clearly. I set it down gently on the desk and look up to meet Stacey’s watchful gaze.

“Why?” I ask. “Why did they reject it?”

“Jackie said it felt like too much of the same.”

“That’s exactly what she wanted,” I say, moving toward the edge of my seat. “You were there. You—you heard her say it. When we got the low sales numbers for Walking Home, she said the issue was that I’d strayed too far from my debut. She said I should’ve—”

“I know what she said.”

“So… I write the perfect companion to The Millers, and now she doesn’t want it?”

“You know how these things are,” Stacey says, hunching her shoulders slightly. “The market changes. Contemporary drama isn’t the hot thing it was when The Millers came out. This third manuscript may have worked if we had tried to sell it even a year ago. . .