Anna walked between the haphazardly stacked boxes. Shoes and gowns spilled out of hastily zippered garment bags. At the time, she’d been happy to box away her marriage, thinking that was all it was—just an experience to be packed away neatly, as if she could put away the feelings and not deal with them. Look where that had gotten her.

“Anna?” Jenny asked hesitantly.

She didn’t know where to start. How could she explain?

“Remember when you said it would suck balls when I got my heart broken?”

She’d lied to herself this whole time. At first, she’d thought John was a hot hookup, and she had tried to convince herself he was a pleasant distraction during a hellish shoot. But by the end, by the last night they’d spent together in Rome, when he’d pulled her with him into the shower, she’d known what it was. He ran his fingers through her hair as he reminded her to close her eyes while the water fell on them both. All those small moments had felt like they’d add up to something else, but now her heart had broken into so many pieces that she wasn’t sure she could find them all.

“It’s like someone tore my still-beating heart out of my chest, and now there’s this gaping hole, and it’s never going to fill up again. I’m like a zombie who doesn’t even want to eat brains.”

“And I’m the writer,” Jenny said.

“That’s what I said,” Reed whispered.

“It’s going to get better, right?”

“What happened?” Jenny asked gently.

Anna noticed that Jenny hadn’t answered her question, but she decided not to call out her friend on it. Anna found a sturdy-looking box to sit on. She told Jenny the revelations from the hotel suite and about her fight with John.

“I couldn’t look at him anymore because he looked sad. Even though I wanted to hug him, but I stopped myself.”

“Oh Anna, it must have been horrible.”

“I can’t believe how dumb I was.”

“You didn’t want to believe Tom was as big an asshole as he is, and you didn’t want to think about John lying to you. That’s not dumb.”

“But it hurts. It feels awful,” Anna said. “Is this how it’s supposed to feel?”

“Yes,” Jenny and Reed said at the same time.

Anna wiped her eyes. “I spent four years with Tom, got divorced, and it never felt this bad. I spent one afternoon with John, and then I was with him for four weeks. Now I feel like I’m drowning.”

“You truly care for him. Time doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Jenny said.

Anna had liked that Tom had pursued her. But in exchange, he’d wanted to mold her into a different version of herself.

“I said awful things to him.”