“I don’t understand,” Anna admitted, shaking her head. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, I swear.”

“Someday you’ll fall in love, and you’ll understand. It’ll suck balls, but you’ll get it.”

“Falling in love doesn’t suck balls.” Anna had been in a relationship before, at least. “I’m not completely ignorant. I was married.”

“You walked away with little more than hurt feelings.”

Anna considered Jenny’s words. Was this the kind of thing Jenny had thought for a long time but never said? The thing was, Jenny wasn’t wrong. Anna had felt relief driving away in her rental truck, with Jenny in the passenger seat and all her possessions jammed into the back, but she hadn’t felt any kind of bone-deep sadness. Nothing compared to what Jenny had felt in that hotel room in Paris.

Anna had been wrong about more than one aspect of her marriage. After speaking to Tom at the premiere, she realized she had been hurt by his behavior during their marriage, but she hadn’t been heartbroken. “Tom made sense at the time, but I think he had so much of what I wanted that I ignored the ways we didn’t fit. It was a mess. I’m a mess.”

“Everyone’s a mess. That’s what no one tells you.”

“It doesn’t matter what happened in the past.” Anna shook off her maudlin feelings. “I’m not going to just fall in love like tripping into a manhole. I can’t date anyone in the business. I can’t go through the scrutiny again.”

“Who else are we going to meet?” Jenny gestured to the soundstage. “No matter how many times you threaten it, you aren’t going to move in with your mother and become a beekeeper or whatever. You would be dead bored doing anything but this.”

Anna knew her friend was right. “You must think I’m useless.”

“I think you’re you.”

That wasn’t exactly a contradiction, but Anna would take what she would get.

Jenny shrugged. “You don’t know if you don’t try.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“I know,” Jenny said. “Let me get the coffee. That’ll help.”

“Coffee helps with everything. I’ll give you my conditioner too.”

“You’re the best.” Jenny wrapped her arms around Anna and patted her on the back.

Anna was watching her friend cross the parking lot to the commissary, thinking about love and failed marriages that hadn’t really hurt, when two vans pulled up, likely the crew and some cast members arriving for the day.

She and Jenny always made a good team, and she was content to be far away from bars, Los Angeles, and screenwriters. Soon, she could throw herself into work. There was no better cure for lingering memories than to mercilessly cut them off for the relentless and immediate responsibilities of a movie shoot.