Page 6 of It's a Love Story

“Not so great.”

She sips in silence, and I am grateful she’s not a morning person. I’ve been out here for an hour, wrapped in my duvet, watching the dew dry on the grass. There’s a tiny piece of raw cuticle on my pointer finger, and I am worrying it with my thumb. I like the distraction of that quick wince of pain each time I touch it.

“How was your Friday?” I ask.

“The hospital was fine, then a guy passed out at happy hour and I taught his friends how to paint his nails.”

“That sounds fun,” I say with no fun in my voice.

“Are you sick?” Clem asks.

“No, why?”

“You’re making a really weird face and you’re wearing your bed.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Can I help?” she asks. And she probably could. If this were a solvable problem, Clem could tackle it. Rodents, oil changes, split ends—Clem can fix it. When we met, she kinda fixed me. She was my first friend at UCLA, and maybe my first real friend anywhere. We met in a little grove of trees when we both stopped to listen to a band practice through an open window. They were insanely bad. I liked how, when it got really, really bad, they all laughed. We both stood there, looking up, and laughed with them.

I kept going back to that spot. First because of the shaded benches, and then because of Clem and the laughter. Their laughter, our laughter. More than the spot itself, Clem was like a secret place I could go to tap into my inner underdog and feel like it was all going to be okay.

But of course she can’t help with this.

“Nathan said Clearwater wouldn’t green-light my movie because it’s not commercial enough, and I told him that I was in close touch with—wait for it—Jack Quinlan and that I’m going to get him to write us a song.”

“No.” The horror on her face matches my own. “Oh God.”

“Yep. So now I have to figure out how to get in touch with him and beg or get the screenwriter to add an alien invasion and a few superheroes to the second act.” I shake my head. “Classic, right? Just peak Janey Jakes.”

I swear I haven’t thought aboutPop Rocksthis often in years. I don’t really even Instagram-stalk Hailey that much. And I never google Jack Quinlan. I coexist with him the way everyone with a radio does. I haven’t felt the shame of the whole thing in forever; in fact, burying shame might be my superpower. There’s something particularly cutting about the shame of that day with Jack because I’m just mad at myself. I was the one. I said the thing. I want to rip off my skin and get out of my body so I don’t have to sit with it. It’s the tiny little nugget inside me that reminds me I used to be a person who wanted love too much.

She scoots closer to me on the swing and puts an arm around me. “This is just. Wow.”

“Yep. All those Janey Jakes memes were a warm-up for this particularoofmoment.”

She laughs. “Temporary insanity. Just tell Nathan that Jack changed his mind and move on. Like today. Otherwise this is going to eat you alive.”

“I could,” I say. But I know that I won’t. At least not today. I want to live for twenty-four more hours in a world where Nathan thinks this is happening. That I’m happening. “Working today?”

“Brunch shift.”

“Bring home the extra bacon and I’ll make BLTs for dinner.”

“I’m also working the dinner shift.” I rest my head on her shoulder. Truly no one works harder than Clem. She has been digging herself out of a hole since Nick quietly lost all of their savings betting on horses in Del Mar. She found out when she tried to withdraw some of that savings to throw him a birthday party. I am not a big Nick fan.

We sit in silence as a warm breeze rattles the bougainvillea. I let my mind drift into the final scene of the movie, when they know it’s real and that they’ll be together forever. My heart does that weird thing again, the thing it hasn’t done since I was fourteen. The thing that tells me this movie will be a hit. I cannot let this project be trashed. There has to be another, better, easier way to make it commercial.

“You’re doing it again,” she says.

“What? Oh.” I see my hand on my heart. Dan almost put his hand on his heart when he was talking aboutTrue Story.I’m sure he wants to turn this thing into something boring, but at least he gets it. He might have ideas. “As if things couldn’t get worse, I think I’m going to have to call Dan Finnegan,” I say, getting up.

“You hate Dan Finnegan.”

“I’m sure everyone does,” I say. “But it’s easier than calling Jack Quinlan. At least I have his number.”

I grab my phone and head into my bedroom. I type in his name to text him and see the last message he sent me, four months ago: Oh I get it. I like that. Tails

A fresh, hot embarrassment that I have absolutely no time for right now rushes up my face. How much shame can one woman bury in her heart? If I text him, he will see that prior conversation too, and no one needs to go back to that disaster. I go to delete the conversation, but don’t. I open my closet door, sit down on the floor space that is exactly the right size for me, pull it closed so I’m completely in the dark, and I call him.

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