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“How did it feel?” she asks after a moment. “Seeing her again.”

I think about that for a beat. “You know, it didn’t feel like much of anything. Like running into someone I used to know. I didn’t have any big feelings either way. I wasn’t mad or sad or hurt. I was more annoyed that she was there, interrupting our post-sex cuddle. If anything, annoyance was the prevalent mood for me.”

“She’s usually the first one to leave,” she says. “This was truly a fluke.”

“What’s Jake like?” I ask. “I mean, is he overbearing, overprotective, anything about him that stands out?”

She’s thoughtful now. “Honestly, no. He’s kind of…invisible when he’s with her. She takes up all the air in the room. She’s big and loud and beautiful, but in an overwhelming way. She doesn’t let anyone else shine—not even him.”

Interesting.

She just articulated in a couple of sentences everything that was wrong with my marriage. All the things that took me far too long to discover for myself until it was too late.

“That’s how she is,” I say finally. “No matter what she’s doing or where she is, she has to be the brightest light in the room. Even at a family dinner, her stories are the best, the funniest, the most interesting. Hell, even at hockey games, she would find a way to make everything about her. And yet, when everything fell apart, she accused me of being the one that stopped trying. The one who let her down.”

“I think she’s the kind of woman who will always be let down. By her friends, her family, the men in her life. She certainly behaves like every single other actor on the set lets her down after every scene. She literally called cut three times her first day—instead of the director, which tends to piss them off—and made everyone start over. I thought Lacy was going to go for her throat.”

That makes me chuckle. “I can picture it. And yeah, lots of her co-stars think she’s…difficult.”

“It’s always the beautiful ones.”

“Not always.” I reach for her hand again.

“I’m not in the public eye. Not like she is.”

“But you hold your own. And guess what! You’ve won an Oscar, something she would probably kill for.”

“I was very lucky.”

“You’re very talented.”

It seems like she wants to say something but then changes her mind. Instead, she leans back in the seat and closes her eyes, like she’s too exhausted to think about anything else.

“Why do you have to be in early tomorrow?” I ask.

“Because it’s Shandy’s last day on set and they want everything to go smoothly so they can move on. Doing all of her stuff ahead of time put the regular production schedule a little behind, but they knew this—it was the only way she would agree to be on the show.”

“Okay, so maybe things will slow down for you after that?”

“Not really. Next week I have to be in L.A. for a few days so I have to make sure my assistants can handle everything while I’m gone.”

“I didn’t know you were going.”

“This just came up. The same production company I worked with when I won the Oscar is gearing up for another blockbuster series, and they want me to do costuming again. It’s two years away but pre-production could start next year, which means stepping away from the movie with Shandy and Jake.”

“That’s a lot to manage.”

“But that’s what I meant when I said I was lucky. My designs for the movie I won the Oscar for? I did them as part of my senior project at NYU. It was a fluke. I read in one of the papers that the costume designer had been fired because she didn’t come up with a single design that made the producers happy. I’m a fan of the script writer—Sammy Jensen—so I know his work. I dreamed up this whole wardrobe. I had nothing to go on except my gut. It was complete fantasy. And then I submitted it through the school.

“It was meant to be a learning experience, where real costume designers and people in the industry critique your work. That kind of thing. Instead, the producers and Sammy himself fell in love with everything, flew me out to L.A. and the next thing you know I had my first job out of college while I was still in college.”

“That’s an amazing story,” I say.

“It is—but like I said, I was lucky. I did a thing that wound up in the right hands at the right time. Yes, I work hard. I busted my ass for that movie. And for every project I’ve done since. But I’m not necessarily special.”

“I disagree. I think that makes you extra special. You had a dream, so to speak. The wardrobe you imagined this screen writer could use. Because you know his work. Because you’re a fan. That makes a difference. And then you took your shot. You didn’t know you’d essentially read his mind but that wasn’t luck—it was you taking a leap of faith. It doesn’t matter that it was a school project. The only thing that matters is that you did something for a specific screen writer and essentially got your work into his hands. The rest is history, baby.”

“I guess I never thought of it that way.”