How to End a Love Story(62)

“Hey,” he says.

“What, we don’t hug anymore?” Karina asks as she leads their crew over, and he gives her a one-armed hug, as well as Andy and Reese.

Grant turns and finds Helen hanging back at a polite distance. “This is Helen. Helen—Andy, Reese, Karina. Andy and Karina worked on The Guys with me; they’re camera and wardrobe department. And Reese is—”

“Newly engaged,” Reese says, flashing his ring finger. “As of last week.”

“Holy shit.” Grant grins. “Congrats, you two.”

“Well, it felt like time,” Andy says.

“What a romantic.” Reese rolls his eyes.

“What do you do, Helen?” Karina asks.

“I, um, I’m a writer,” she says. “Grant and I work together.”

“That makes sense,” Karina says with a slow smile as she tilts her head. “It’s nice to meet you, Helen.”

Grant suddenly regrets everything he’s ever told Karina and the existence of ex-girlfriends, as a concept.

“We should get going, before all the good stuff gets got,” Andy says. “It’s good to see you, man.”

“You too,” he nods and waves them off.

It occurs to Grant that he doesn’t really have friends, for all his agent claims that everyone likes him. He had thought of Andy as a friend, but he’s realizing theirs was the kind of casual friendship of convenience that came from working together for months on end, twelve plus hours a day. They’re friendly now, but they’re not friends—not in the sense of keeping up with each other’s lives or going out of their way to see each other outside of work.

They had all hung out as a unit back then, Andy and Reese, Grant and Karina. But once the show ended, so did most of the things they had in common, including his relationship. He thinks this might be a character flaw of his, this ability to fall into friendships and relationships so easily, when they never seem to last once the initial trappings of what makes him temporarily relevant in people’s lives passes. He isn’t sure how to fix it.

“Did you . . .” Helen starts, looking back at them. “Never mind.”

She’s frowning and he thinks of how she looked asking about Lauren DiSantos in that basement on New Year’s Eve—like she’d been annoyed she was even bringing it up. He wants to reassure her suddenly, though of what, he’s not even sure.

“Karina and I used to date,” he says. “It wasn’t very serious.”

Helen nods. “Right.”

Someone brings over his coatrack and they manage to maneuver it into the convertible with the top down. It creates a perfect barrier between him and Helen on the drive back.



They stop for lunch at a drive-through In-N-Out and sit in the parking lot with their burgers and fries under a line of palm trees.

“I don’t get the secret menu thing,” she says as she polishes off the last of her animal-style fries. “Why make everything harder?”

“It makes people feel cooler,” he says. “Knowing things not everyone knows.”

Her phone rings then, and she freezes slightly.

“It’s my mom,” she says. “I should . . .”

She picks up and he suddenly finds himself holding his breath.

“Mom? Hi,” she says, and turns slightly away from him. “No, I’m just out to lunch with a—friend . . . yeah.”

A friend. Grant wonders what he would call Helen if his mom asked. She had lifted cool brows when he’d told her who was coming for dinner the day after Christmas, then she’d calmly asked if Helen had any dietary restrictions. The day before he flew back, she’d asked him if he would see Helen again soon. “We do work together, Mom,” he’d said. She’d given him a funny look and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Helen is speaking in a jumbled mix of English and Mandarin now—he can pick out occasional American phrases like the show and production office and the Sheraton in Santa Monica—and he wonders what he is doing.

He had left New Jersey with a single-minded determination that they weren’t done with each other yet, and he spent the days after New Year’s Eve weighing his options in case Helen might not agree. He opted for a slow and subtle approach—if he’d done anything else, it would have been too easy for her to take any scrap of evidence of disconnect (you don’t use punctuation in your texts, this is doomed) and build it into an insurmountable wall between them.

She’s sitting in his car now and there isn’t a wall between them. But there is a coatrack. And he can’t help but feel the stupid thing is a spindly little metaphor for something.

“Okay. Yes. I will. Bye.” Helen hangs up and looks over at him.

“Good phone call?” he asks.

“My parents are coming to town in a few weeks, for the start of filming,” she says. “They wanted to see the set and take pictures and brag about me to their friends.”

“Seems pretty worth bragging about to me,” Grant says.

She looks up at him, worry clouding her eyes.

“I haven’t told them you’re working on the show,” she says, a dent of concern forming between her brows that he wants to smooth and kiss away.

“No, I figured as much,” Grant says.