I manage to make it to the chaise before I have a complete breakdown, but once I’m there I cry for a full half an hour straight. I try to call Mitch three times, but he doesn’t pick up.

Finally, when the sobs subside, I drag myself off the chaise, splash my face with some cold water, and call Kari. What else can I do?

She answers the phone brightly, chirping “Hello” in my ear in a tone so completely the opposite of what I’m feeling that I start to cry again. I manage to identify myself through my tears and she asks, “Are you at home?”

I mumble assent, crying too hard to do any better.

“I’ll be right there,” she says, and hangs up.

I manage to stop the tears long enough to call work. I tell Ryan I’m sick, and I’m sure I sound it because I’m all stuffed up and hoarse. He’s disappointed, because apparently he brought in cake and ice cream to celebrate Melody’s firing. He says he’ll save me a piece.

When I hang up, I go downstairs to prop the door open. It’s already open, and I come back up, cursing the stupid slow repairmen who haven’t fixed the buzzer yet. If the damn buzzer was working, the damn door wouldn’t be open half the time, and Mitch would have never made it upstairs like that. For that matter, neither would Drew.

I call Mitch’s cell again. It goes to voicemail. Again.

Lose my number, Jenna. We’re done.

That brings on a fresh wave of tears. When Kari knocks fifteen minutes later I answer the door in all my glory: red eyes and a runny nose, my hair limp around my face. There’s a wad of damp tissues in one hand, the entire box of tissues in the other. Glorious me.

“Oh, my God,” she says. “What is going on?”

“Mitch left me,” I say, and pull a new tissue out of the box.

She looks at me like I’ve lost what little was left of my mind. “What do you mean Mitch left you?”

“He left,” I say. I’m speaking English; what exactly doesn’t she understand here? “He left me, he hates me. He’s never coming back.”

I shuffle back to the living room and collapse onto the chaise. I’m going to have to burn it. My sheets, too. And that note he left. And—

“What is going on?” Kari sits down beside me and takes the box of tissues. “I’m missing work for this. You have to talk. Stop crying.”

“I can’t stop crying,” I say, through tears.

“You don’t cry,” she reminds me.

I throw my hands up, gesture at my face, my tissues, my everything. “I guess I do now,” I say. “I cried on Ryan.”

“Come on, sit up, talk to me.”

I think briefly about disobeying, maybe lapsing into another crying fit, but I’d rather have a sympathetic ear. So I take a few deep breaths, straighten up, and look her dead in the eye so she gets that I’m one hundred percent serious.

“I think I’m in love with Mitch,” I say.

“Jenna, that’s wonderful,” she says. “He’s obviously crazy about you, too.”

“Don’t say that,” I wail. “That doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is ruined.”

“Oh, come on—don’t be melodramatic.” She smiles. “What can possibly have gone wrong when he hasn’t even been around for the last three days.”

“He thinks I slept with Drew.”

“You did sleep with Drew. Which you already told him a couple of weeks ago.”

“No, not that.” I’m telling everything the wrong way. “He thinks I slept with Drew last night.”

“Why on earth would he think that?”

“Because he showed up here this morning and Drew answered the door.”

She says nothing for a moment, then asks, “Did you sleep with him?”

“Who?”

“Drew!”

“No,” I say, shaking my head so violently it makes me a little nauseated.

“Okay, good. I didn’t think so.” She pats my cheek.

“It doesn’t matter, though. He’s gone.” I put my face in my hands. “It looked really bad, Kari.”

“I imagine it did,” she says. “I guess if I were him, I’d certainly wonder why were you having a sleepover with your ex.”

“He showed up drunk, and passed out. I let him sleep it off in here,” I say, indicating the living room. “I didn’t know Mitch would show up and think—”

“How bad was it?” she asks. “Scale of one to ten.”

“Fifty. Drew answered the door in his underwear.”

She winces. “Ouch. What did Mitch say?”

“Oh, God, so many things.” I look at her helplessly. “He said he was going to break Drew’s hands.”

She arches her eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, and then he said we were … done.”

My voice hitches on the last word, and she rubs my back a little.

“Okay, excuse me if this is a stupid question, but … why didn’t you just tell him you didn’t sleep with Drew?”

I tell her what happened—throwing Drew out, everything Mitch said, the way I could literally not get a word in edgewise—and by the time I’m done she just looks incredulous.

“It’s a soap opera,” she says. “This is literally a soap opera plot. I mean, maybe even one I’ve seen before—”

“This is my life,” I say, “and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Call him!” She hands me my cell phone.

I set it back on the table. “There’s no point.”

“Why don’t you let him decide if there’s any point?” She hands me the phone again. “Call him.”

“I’ve been calling him. He said we’re done. He meant it.”

She waves this off. “They always mean it when they say it.”

“No, I’m serious. I told you—he already gave me a choice. In or out, no more playing with his feelings. He’s not coming back for another round of that—especially not after this.”

“For God’s sake, Jenna—give me that. I’ll do it myself.” She punches in his number angrily, then waits. Then she hangs up. “Voice mail. You should leave him one.”

“You don’t understand how mad he is.” I jump up and grab her purse from the kitchen table, rummaging in it till I find her phone. “Here. Call him from your phone. Don’t tell him you’re with me. See what happens.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Do it.”

She shakes her head, but she dials the number. I can hear it ring, twice, then Mitch answers.

“Oops, sorry!” Kari says brightly, but her eyes on me are sad. “Meant to call Jenna. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

She hangs up and pulls me back down beside her, and I rest my head on her shoulder.

“See?” I say.

“Okay, so he’s mad. He’ll get over it.”

“He won’t.”

“He will. I promise you. Give him a little time, and he’ll come back around, no matter what he said. Doesn’t he always?”

That hits me—really hits me, right in the heart. I sit up straight and look at her. She’s absolutely right. “Yeah. He always does. Even though it makes him feel like shit.”

“Then he will this time,” she says.

“I don’t think he will, but … you know what? That doesn’t matter.” I toss my wad of tissues on the coffee table. “He’s come back every time I’ve fucked up or pushed him away … except that one time.”

“Which one time?”

“When I slept with Drew. I had to chase him after that. Ryan told me what to do.”

“Ryan?”

“Guys know stuff—about other guys, and like, how they think.” I stand up. “And you know what? Even then, he had to be the one to come to me. I mean, I called him and called him, and I made it clear what I wanted … but in the end, he had to come to me.”

“Okay, but what—”

“I don’t have Ryan, so I’m going to have to wing it. I have to go to him, right now.”

She looks up at me. “He’ll be at the studio.”

“Then I’ll go to the studio.” I walk into my room and start pawing through my closet.

Kari follows me. “And do what? Pull him out of work and tell him you’re not banging Drew again? I mean, it can wait. Why would he listen at work any better than he’d listen anywhere else? Wait till he gets home.”

“And what? Go over there and ring the doorbell and he doesn’t let me in?” I shake my head. “That’s not going to work.”

“Of course he’d let you in. And that way at least you’d be alone. You can’t do this at his job.”

“We don’t need to be alone,” I say. “He needs me to come after him. He needs me to stop expecting him to always be the one who tries again.”

I push my black sheath aside, and there it is. The Vera Wang dress. The one that no occasion has ever been special enough for.

I pull it off the hanger and lay it on the bed, then start stripping off my bathrobe, my t-shirt.

“Jenna,” she says, and her voice is tentative now. “I’m trying to be positive, and I really do think he’ll get over this, but … what if you get there and he doesn’t want you? Do you want that to play out in front of the cast of Midnight Confessions?”

I pull the dress over my head and thread my arms through the forty million criss-crossing shoulder straps. The dress settles around me like a cloud, all billowy layers of white with a delicate floral print. “I have nothing to lose.” I put a hand on each of her shoulders and stare directly into her eyes. “Nothing. If it’s already over, then I’ll embarrass myself a little. And Kari? He’s so worth it. But if there’s a chance I can fix this … it has to be this way.” I turn around, present her with my back. “Zip me.”