Page 116 of Don't Quit the Day Job

"Yeah, but it's even more complicated than that. He's actually the husband of her lifelong friend."

"What?" he says. "Her lifelong friend who's also graduated from college?"

"No. So when she was younger, she worked in a bakery for money for college, and the owner of the bakery is her friend Simone, and the guy she's having an affair with is Simone's husband."

"Oh, that sounds horrible."

"Exactly. She feels super conflicted. She loves him because she thinks he's the love of her life. Yet, she feels incredibly guilty because she's betraying Simone who's always been there for her."

"Well, yeah, she should."

"And well, basically Simone ends up dying."

"Oh, this sounds a little depressing."

"It is kind of sad. But then when Simone dies, Lisa is left a bunch of letters."

"Letters from Simone?"

"Exactly. And she reads the letters and basically, she finds out that Simone knew that she was having an affair with her husband and that Simone didn't blame her. And that Simone just wished for her the strength to leave him and to actually have her own life."

"Wow. That's dreadfully nice of Simone."

"Well, it turns out that Simone had also been the other woman and that the husband was actually her best friend's baby daddy. And that Simone had stolen him from her best friend, and that's why she knew that she couldn't judge my character because the saying is as you get them is how you lose them. Anyway, there's this scene where she goes down to the ocean and she realizes that she doesn't like who she's become, and that even though she's been blaming him, she also isn't any better." I stare at him. "Sorry, I've just been going on and on."

"No, it sounds really interesting. It sounds like a role you can really sink your teeth into."

"Yeah. I thought that it was nuanced enough to really push me to my limits because obviously, I think my character's a dog and a bitch, and I would never be friends with someone who slept with a married man. But I guess that's part of being an actress."

"I guess so," he says. "I'm excited to see the movie. When do you have to go back to L.A. to start filming?"

"I'm not sure," I say. "We might be going to Canada and a small town in Croatia."

"Oh." He looks at me. "So you won't even be in the States."

"I'm not a hundred percent sure yet. I think they're still figuring out the shooting locations." I lick my lips nervously. "So how was D.C.?"

"I wasn't in D.C., Lila," he says after a couple of moments.

"What? What do you mean you weren't in D.C.? Where were you?"

"I went to South Carolina," he says as he merges onto the freeway.

"But you were in D.C. looking for a job. Were you in South Carolina looking for a job?"

"I don't know where Marie got that from, but I wasn't looking for a job. I'm a partner at a law firm, Lila. You know that."

"I know, but your aspiration is to become a Supreme Court Justice. I thought there was some job that…"

"Oh, you and Marie really do not know much about the law and the pathway to becoming a judge." He starts laughing. "There's no job that is going to make it easier for me to become a Supreme Court Justice in D.C." He shakes his head. "I told Marie I was going to D.C. because I didn't want her to know I was going to South Carolina."

"Oh, was it about her and the baby?"

My head starts pounding.

"No," he says. "It was about something else."

"Are you going to tell me?" I ask him, wondering if he trusts me enough to tell me what was going on in his life.

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