Until he started dating Suzanne, he and his old gang got together on the weekends to hang out: grab a few beers, maybe listen to a local band and hit up Denny’s for breakfast in the wee hours. Marie was part of that group, the only girl. She was fun, with her knack for impressions and spontaneous tap dancing. She had aspired to be the next Shirley Temple as a child, took classes for years. Grant had taken them for a while, too, just enough to fake being Fred Astaire to her Ginger Rogers at the senior year talent show—which they’d won. Some of his high school pals still called him Fred.

He’d been stupid to get high with her during lunch last spring. He hardly ever smoked anymore, and never during the workday. Marie was the one who’d brought the joint to the state park, where they sometimes took subs they picked up from Capri’s—but she’d been smart enough to take the afternoon off. He, on the other hand, had gone to a deposition. The senior partner had told him to find another job before he fired him.

Suzanne, predictably, had gone bananas. Did he have any idea what he was risking? Any idea at all? She accused him of reverting to his old ways, his old slacker ways, with his old slacker friends—which was simply not true. She hadn’t known him in college, when weed was both his intramural and his varsity sport. She was way overreacting. Not only was medical marijuana legal in many states, recreational marijuana was legal, too, he reminded her.

“Alcohol is legal, too, but you can’t get drunk on the job, Grant. You never grew up, and you never will.”

“Yes I did,” he said, his hackles up the way they used to get when his sisters teased him. “I can change.”

“Swear then,” she said, holding up the photo of Adam on his first birthday, chocolate frosting smeared all over his face.

“I swear,” he said, his hand on the frame. “Never to smoke weed again.”

“I’ll divorce you if you do,” she said, eyes pinpricks. “I will.”

And she would. Ridiculous as it might be, she would do it.

Thus he hadn’t lit up in four months. He’d thought about it, sure, but only because he still had some weed. If he were smart he would just open the Baggie and flush the contents down the toilet, but he liked knowing it was there, just in case, like potassium iodide pills in case of a nuclear attack.