“I never should have told you my type.” Clara shook her head, eyes raised to the ceiling. “At least I’m getting laid.”

John opened the refrigerator door and grabbed himself a beer.

“You might be able to meet someone,” Clara said, teasing. “You’re not unattractive, I guess.”

“You really know how to make a guy feel good about himself.”

“Well, before they spend too much time with you.” Clara grinned.

The less said about the night the two of them had spent together, the better. A week after meeting in Cairo and traveling together in the same group of friends, he and Clara had slept together. After a few awkward days on the beach in the Sinai Peninsula, the two of them had admitted they worked better as friends. They had never looked back.

“Seriously,” Clara said, “when was the last time you brought someone home?”

“I’ve dated,” John said. He had dated here and there since they’d moved to LA, but nothing that had any spark worth igniting. John immediately thought of Anna and the way her skin had tasted under his lips. He felt his face flush.

Clara narrowed her eyes. “Did you hook up with someone?”

“No.”

Clara could always tell when he was lying. It really annoyed him.

“You don’t hook up with actresses anymore. You avoid undergrads like the plague. You never meet anyone. All you do in your free time is stare at your laptop with your head in your hands.”

“Ha.”

“Someone from the bar.” Clara set her beer on the counter. “You broke your sacred rule and hooked up with someone from the bar.”

John sipped his beer, wishing that he hadn’t moved in with his best friend. Who needs this kind of complication in his life?

“A hipster.” Clara shook her head. “I thought better of you.”

“Anna’s a movie director, okay. She’s not a hipster.”

“Impressive. Did you get her to read your script?”

John choked on his beer.

“Hot, mixing work and sex.”

“We didn’t sleep together. We just kissed in an alley.”

“Romantic.”

“I didn’t show her my script.”

“Thank God.”

“She wouldn’t read it.”

“I like her already.”

“She was—” What was Anna? He liked her smile, and he liked talking to her about movies. He liked the way she’d kissed him back, all messy and sort of breathlessly. When was the last time he’d met someone he liked so much? “Her favorite Hitchcock movie is Shadow of a Doubt.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she has good taste in movies.”

Clara rolled her eyes. “You could ask her out, like a normal person.”

“I don’t want to date anyone.” John thought about Anna, though, of how she’d looked at him under her cap and laughed at his stories. “I’ve got too much to do.”