Quinn notices my aloneness, in the way I jump at him when he comes home after work, asking him how his day was, if he has evening plans, if there’s any DIY project he wants done around the apartment. It’s the first time in my life I’ve felt needy. “You should get a hobby,” Quinn finally says one day when he comes home after happy hour drinks with his coworkers and finds me watching the eighteenth season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, when I’d only been on the first a week ago.

He’s right. I should have some constructive pastime, aside from intermittently reaching out to old work contacts, scouring LinkedIn. I wonder, in one moment of tumultuous self-reflection, if I should have been applying all along, from the moment Huda officially fired me. If this gap in employment is actually making matters worse for me, apart from my name.

I’ve abandoned Odilie’s Instagram for the time being, the browser window with the picture of her, Tom and Thelma Kay lingering, hidden, on my laptop screen. It’s like my own bizarre process of revisiting her life froze when I entered it physically. I try to look up Thelma Kay. I google her. I google her in combination with Tom, against my better judgment. Nothing comes up. It’s like she vanished. Unless, of course, Thelma is a fake name, used only for social media.

Then one day, about two weeks after my move back to the city, I get a text from Page.

Hi Vera! Been thinking about you. Was wondering if you wanted to come over sometime this week? Super casual, just to chill. Maybe we can order in pizza?

I follow Quinn like a puppy when he comes home, waving my phone in his face as he tries to make a stir-fry for himself. “What do I do? Do I go see her? This is so weird, right?”

Quinn sighs, begins to chop an onion. “She’s obviously lonely. You did your due diligence, though, by going to the ceremony. You don’t really owe her anything else.”

“That’s not an answer,” I say as he dumps the onions into the pan to sauté.

“Okay, then go! Unless you think it’ll make you spiral or something.” He turns to me as the onions sizzle. “Look. I can’t really tell you what to do here. I’m not in your shoes. I’m not in her shoes. Everything I say might be a misstep. Any advice I give could be bad or incorrect. But what have you got to lose at this point?”