It was only a partial lie. When Hannah fantasized about Bee’s wedding, where she’d see Tom for the first time since their breakup two and a half years ago, she didn’t see herself reuniting with him romantically, at least not instantly.

Hannah had longed for Tom’s return for the first year or so after their breakup, but that yearning had evolved into a series of revenge-and-rejection fantasies that began to seem almost plausible once it became clear that they would see each other at Bee’s wedding. Hannah would be all dressed up, confident, and surrounded by their shared friends, who missed them as a couple.

Hannah liked to imagine that Tom would spot her from across the room during Bee’s reception and would be drawn to her much like he’d been when he’d met her during his junior year of college.

Tom would notice that she’d stopped highlighting her hair, which turned out to be a pretty chocolate color that finally matched her eyebrows. He would also see that she’d lost the twenty-two pounds she’d gained after graduation, which Hannah had determined was the real reason Tom had left her, despite his many claims otherwise. Tom would be disarmed by Hannah’s new confidence, intimated by her posture. He would discover that she’d stopped biting her nails, his least favorite of her many bad habits. He would hear from Bee, or maybe Vicki, that Hannah had been hired by a reputable casting office that handled national commercials and real grown-up films. No more low-budget theater. No more finding actors to star in hospital videos about diabetes care.

Tom had told Hannah shortly before their breakup that taking those corporate casting jobs made her a sellout, that there was no point in casting projects that weren’t even meant to entertain. “You’re not really happy,” he’d said to her during the four-day fight that resulted in the end of their relationship. “You said it yourself. This is mindless work.”

But years later those terrible jobs had paid off. The young directors whose first gigs were in bad theater, directing touring productions of Scooby Doo: The Musical, the ones who got their first paychecks producing sexual-harassment-training videos for big companies, were now directing real films. They remembered Hannah and hired her out of loyalty, just as they’d promised they would when they’d met her in her early twenties.

That’s how Hannah had found this new gig, the one she hoped would be a starring vehicle for Natalie Portman. The director of the film had worked with Hannah four years ago on a regional, nonunion car commercial. Now she was directing a film with a six-million-dollar budget.

Tom had been wrong; those awful jobs put Hannah exactly where she’d hoped to be in her late twenties. It was Rob who had been right. He was the one who had sent e-mail pep talks telling Hannah to stay in New York and stick it out. He’d even sent her a funny note after seeing her first national television commercial with SAG actors.