“At least I’m on a dating app,” Annie counters.

“When’s the last time you went on it to get a date?”

“I talked to someone last month. We had phone sex.”

“Congratulations.”

Annie grins. “Ten bucks I have you beat.”

She does. “I’ve been busy.”

“Why not go back to what’s-her-name?”

“Thiel?”

“Yeah. Who names their kid a color?”

“Thiel’s parents,” I say. “And it’s not spelled that way. She’s moved on.” Almost a year ago.

“Why?”

I pick out a few more jellybeans. “Why what?”

“Did she move on?”

I shrug. “My job got under her skin. She thought I was on the road too much and put work above time with her . . . I might’ve missed a vacation, and a few dinners.”

“How many dinners?”

“Too many.” Thiel’s an industrial designer, smart, athletic, and cute as hell. She liked to play volleyball on the weekends, go to salsa clubs, and plan vacations for us. She deserved better.

Annie stares at me. “What?” I snip.

“You are fairly obsessed with work in general and you’ve reached new heights with this article.”

“Said no editor to her journalist, ever,” I joke.

“Get out of here,” Annie says.

“Sylvie will call,” I announce over my shoulder as I leave.

But I think we both know I might be a dead man walking.

EIGHT

Sylvie

“That’ll be twenty-nine bucks,” the delivery guy says as he hands over my sushi order.

I give him forty. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks! Big Friday night plans?” he asks.

“Huge,” I joke with a nod at my small order.

“A friend’s band is playing at Ray’s Room. They go on at midnight. You should check it out.”

He’s cute—shaggy brown hair, hoodie sweatshirt, and cool vibe. “Maybe.”

Halfway down the front walk he turns and says, “Call a few friends. Come to the show. Vincent’s band is really, really good.”

I wave and shut the door. There are no friends to call. I’m not a total shut-in, I do go to Soul Cycle and hot yoga, and sometimes I even get a juice with people after class. But once they figure out what I do for a living—I used to say entertainment like everyone else in LA without giving specifics, but now that I’m getting recognizable, that’s harder to pull off—there’s a shift. Either they want to know everything about being a psychic, get weird because they think what I do is bullshit, or are afraid I can read their minds. When that happens, I switch class times or studios. I’m currently driving over an hour for my workouts, having exhausted the gyms close by. That said, I do have needs. In the past there have been a couple of casual boyfriends, but as soon as they started to get serious, I broke it off.

I put dinner on my coffee table littered with papers then sink onto the dark blue velvet couch. I live in a two-bedroom condo in Silver Lake bought with my own money. Sometimes it’s still hard to believe it’s mine, considering the basement apartment I shared in San Francisco and the succession of studio apartments I lived in once I’d moved to LA. Instead of cheap posters, there are a few paintings decorating my walls, and hand-built shelves filled with favorite books. I found the gently used couch and matching chairs by scouring secondhand shops, and I spent a fortune on the chandelier that hangs over an antique dining table I still need to refinish.