Ryan greets me with a grimace when I walk in the door Tuesday morning.

I eye him warily. “You know, it’s getting so I don’t even like to see you sometimes,” I say. I don’t mean it. Much. “What now?”

“Things kind of blew up here Friday afternoon,” he says.

“Of course they did,” I mutter. God forbid I take a day off; the place apparently will disintegrate if I keep that up. “What happened?”

“That report you said was on your computer?” He raises an eyebrow at me. “The focus group results analysis? It wasn’t there. Ben was pissed.”

“Of course it’s there,” I say, and head into my office, with him hot on my heels. The computer is on—I always leave it on—and I click on the folder labeled Grow. A list of files pops up and I scan it for the one I want. “It’s called Focus Group Results, with the date.”

“I’m telling you—”

“It’s not here,” I say. I re-sort the list a couple of times, alphabetically, then by date. It’s not here. “I wonder if I renamed the file and forgot?”

“I opened every document,” he says. “No luck.”

“I’m sure I have it backed up somewhere, maybe not the final version but at least I won’t have to write it from scratch,” I say, mentally kicking my own ass for being so stupid. Distracted by my stupid laughable personal life, no doubt. I’ve got to get a handle on this absent-mindedness. This is no time to be a flake.

“No worries—after Ben had a little bit of a hissy fit out in the hallway, Melody told us she had a hard copy.”

Oh, thank God. That report was the entire basis for the final design for the brochure. “I’m going to put that girl in for a raise,” I say, feeling like I should go out and hug her.

“Well, while you’re passing out raises, don’t forget me,” he says, and turns to leave.

“If you start pulling my fat out of the fire, I’ll put you in for one, too,” I call after him.

I shoot Melody an email thanking her for saving my butt again, then resolutely put my personal troubles out of my mind and get back to work.

Immediately after lunch, as I’m finishing up an email to Ben, Ryan buzzes me. “Mitch is on the phone,” he says. “What do you want me to tell him?”

I press my fingers to my eyes and silently lament that I haven’t been run over by a city bus.

“Jenna?”

“Put him through.”

There’s a click, then the voice. “Hey. Miss me?”

So much, I think, and very carefully say, “Oh, always,” in the breeziest, most carefree tone I can fake. It actually comes out pretty good, I think. “How did the luncheon and stuff go?”

I know perfectly well how they went, since I’ve got pretty much every devastating detail I gleaned off the internet engraved in my brain, but I’m not going to tell him that.

“It was okay. Signed a lot of autographs. Posed for a lot of photos. Pretty much same as always.”

“Did you get any lectures about being a bad guy?”

“Only a few. Most folks seemed bummed that I was gone, so that was nice. I really just wanted to get back, though.”

I force it out: “Did Kari have fun?”

“Kari had a good time. The hotel rooms are pretty swank.”

This only makes me think of him and Kari sharing a hotel room, which naturally leads me to think of him and Kari sharing a bed, which naturally leads to me wanting to toss myself out my office window. I take a moment to compose myself, refrain from actually jumping out the window—not exactly Herculean restraint—and close my eyes. This is actually worse than I thought, and I wouldn’t have believed that possible.

“That’s awesome,” I say, aiming for a light and airy tone but only managing to sound kind of high-pitched and weird.

“But anyway, I’m back,” he says. “And you seem to have recovered.”

“Yes, thank you. I felt better the next day.”

I most certainly did not feel better the next day.

“Good. I worried about you while I was gone. You want to get together?”

Just friends, just friends, just friends.

I force a huge smile on my face. I’ve read that if you’re smiling on the phone, the person on the other end can hear a difference. I hope fake smiles work. “It’s an absolutely shit week, actually. I expect I’ll be at the office late for the next few days.”

This is a straight-up lie, but I need a few days’ breathing room. Just to get myself accustomed to … well, honestly, to the same thing I’ve been supposed to be accustomed to all along: Just friends.

“What’s Friday like?”

“Um…” I think about it. “I have a half-day.”

“Perfect,” he says. “What do you think about finally getting a peek inside the hallowed halls of the ABC studio?”

“Meaning?”

“I have a late call on Friday, and I’ve only got two scenes to film. Why don’t you meet me at the studio after lunch and watch me shoot? I’ll probably only be on set a few hours.”

Okay, this is a bridge too far. “Seems like Kari would be a better candidate for that,” I say, still smiling my widest.

“She’s already been,” he says, “last week. She would have hounded me to death by now otherwise.”

His tone is warm and affectionate; aren’t they just the cutest thing? I remind myself that my window doesn’t open, so I’m going to have to finish this phone call.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m not, like, a big fan.”

“You don’t have to be. It’s still interesting, and I’ll enjoy showing you around. Oh, and how about this: You said you don’t know how to play pool? We can head to Jacks, beat the Friday crowd. I’ll show you how to run a table. I’m going camping with Luis upstate this weekend, so it can’t be a late night, but you deserve an afternoon off. And you might even have fun.”

I don’t tell him I took last Friday off. He might ask why, and what am I going to say? Because every time I thought of you and Kari I wanted to go lie in traffic?

Yeah, no.

What I do say, though I’m not positive I should, is: “I saw you on Midnight Confessions yesterday.”

“Did you really?” He’s got that warm grin in his voice.

“I had the day off. I couldn’t follow much—”

“Oh, that’s not good. These things are supposed to be written so you can jump right in, and catch on fast.”

“You said the writing was good,” I tease.

“It is,” he says. “It can be both.”

“I don’t think the fault lay with the writing,” I say, not wanting him to be insulted. “I was cleaning up the living room, and distracted. I saw you macking on some hot brunette though. Would that be the stepsister?”

“That would be the stepsister. She’ll be there Friday. Come meet her.”

This is just impossible. I open my mouth to say no … and stop, reconsidering. The thing is, his work does sound interesting; after the fuss Kari’s made all this time, maybe I’d like to see what all the commotion is about. And it’s a non-threatening way to spend time with him. He’ll be busy doing other things and we won’t have to be always having these uncomfortable conversations that remind me how badly I screwed everything up between us. No—the possibility of something between us.

And Ryan is right. I’m going to have to see him all the damn time. I can hardly stop being friends with Kari, and he’ll be with her a lot. At least, if he was my boyfriend, I’d keep him around quite a lot.

Which he is not.

And that’s the thing. A studio tour? A pool date with my best friend’s guy? Kari loves me, and I’m sure Kari trusts me—she knows me well enough, how could she not?—but that really might be just a bit too much.

“Should we invite Kari?” I ask.

“She’s at an All the World event on Long Island,” he says. “But she was the one who suggested I take you to see the studio.”

That’s certainly not what I expected to hear. “She did?”

“She did. How about it?”

“You know what?” I say. “I would like that. That sounds like a fun way to end the week.”

“Awesome,” he says. “Do you know where the studio is?”

I can’t help smiling. “I’ve spent more time stalking the front door of the ABC studio than I would admit to anyone but you. Because only you would understand it wasn’t for my own shady ends.”

He laughs. “Yeah, Kari is certainly something else,” he says. His voice is warm and affectionate, and I want to die.

But I’m not going to die. I’m going to get a grip on myself and figure out exactly how I can make a place in my life for Mitch as a casual friend. It’s too painful to imagine us being as close as we were, but I can manage something, if only for show.

I’m the one who made things turn out this way; it’s my job to live with it as best I can.

“So do I just come up there and ask to be let in?”

“Be there at, say, twelve-thirty?” he says. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Okay. See you then.”

He hangs up, and I bang my head ever-so-gently on the desk, just once. Then I hit Send on my email and turn to the next task in my inbox.

Hopefully by Friday I’ll have figured out a way to deal with this.

* * *

When I get home, there’s a message—my mom. Why haven’t I called, am I ever going to come visit, and so on. I listen to the end, dutifully, and then delete it. I’ll call her tomorrow, maybe.

There’s also the message Kari left on Thursday. I listen to it again. I have something awesome to tell you.

I should call her back. Thursday was a while ago. Although, she was also in LA for four days, so it probably doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. I could get away with not calling her until tomorrow. Maybe even Thursday.

I just … the thing is, Kari and I share everything. I mean everything. And I think—no, I know—that if I go out for brunch or a drink or whatever with her, and she starts telling me about her trip to LA, and everything she did there? Yeah, no.

A day will come when I can listen to Kari talk about having sex with Mitch … but it is not this fucking day.

I’m gonna need some time and space before I wade into that. Maybe I’ll call her tomorrow. I absolutely have to call her before I go out and play pool alone with her boyfriend—sanctioned or not, there’s a BFF code—but there’s no reason I can’t do that tomorrow. Or Thursday.

Happy to have that settled, I open the refrigerator; I don’t know why, because I haven’t been shopping and it’s not like elves would have come to fill the fridge while I was at work. As expected, there’s nothing to eat.

I do have beer, though, so that’s something.

I call for takeout and go down to prop the door open. The buzzer has officially given out, and everyone is just propping the door open all the time—something I will not mention to my mother when she calls. The property management company is supposed to send someone, but it might be a couple of weeks.

Which, honestly, no one is coming to see me anyway, so that’s fine. I’ll just hole up in here and be a hermit.

But I’ll be a hermit who has beer and Thai food. There are worse things.