Ben laughed.

“Yeah, some dudes get so scared of therapy. Like, do you think they’re witches who are going to steal your power, or something? It’s just talking to people. One time I mentioned offhand to a friend I’d just come from therapy and he reacted like I said I’d just come from robbing a bank or something.”

It had taken him a long time after that to mention it to anyone else. Not because he thought it was something to be ashamed of, but because he didn’t want to deal with people who did. Especially after the time he’d mentioned therapy to a woman he was dating, who seemed to think it made him damaged in some alluring way, which had creeped him out.

“Yeah, it took me awhile to get over feeling like I should feel bad about all of this, or that something was wrong with me.” Anna shook her head. “Well, to start getting over feeling like that, at least.” She moved her hand off his. He wished she hadn’t.

“Also, um. Can I ask you a favor?” she asked.

“Anything,” he said.

“Can we talk about something else? I haven’t . . .” Her voice wavered. “That was a lot, is all.”

Ben didn’t let his expression change, and he didn’t reach for her hand, even though he wished he could give her a hug. She clearly didn’t want to get emotional now. Lucky for her, he had a lot of practice at avoiding emotions.

“Absolutely.” He thought fast. “Okay. What’s your default breakfast order? You know mine. And please, do not give me any yogurt-and-acai-berries nonsense; it’s just you and me in this car, no one is listening.”

She laughed out loud, which had been his goal.

“You read that interview, did you? Yeah, that was bullshit, but I have to say these things sometimes, as much as I hate it. My manager made me do that one. I also went to a spin class with that interviewer, if you can believe that. Okay, okay, my real breakfast order is a modified version of what I got this morning.”

He thought about her that morning, in a robe that showed an incredible amount of cleavage, a breakfast sausage in her hand. Good God. He’d had to bring this up?

“Scrambled eggs and breakfast sausages?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Yes, but ideally I’d also have very crispy hash browns, and if I’m being indulgent, sourdough toast. But they only had home fries on the room service menu, and those are usually too soggy for me, especially via room service. They had no sourdough, so I got the English muffin.”

He thought about that for a moment.

“So you get no potatoes at all if you can’t have crispy hash browns?”

She nodded very seriously. This seemed to be distracting her well.

“Yes. Or, rather, I’ll get no potatoes at all if I can’t have good, crispy ones. I try not to let the Hollywood weight thing get to me too much, but if I’m going to eat carbs, they’d better be my favorite kinds of carbs. So crispy potatoes or no potatoes at all.”

“That’s fair,” he said. “I, on the other hand, will eat potatoes of any size, shape, and manner. Mashed, fried, scalloped, baked, hashed, totted, whatever you can do to a potato, I’ll eat it.”

They went on like that for the next hundred miles or so, talking hard about mostly nothing. Anna seemed to be smiling the whole time, and her body didn’t have that stiff, anxious air that it had when she’d told him about her crisis and the aftermath.

“Heard from your parents lately?” he asked her, right as they drove past the off-ramp to SFO. He was so glad he’d made that ridiculous, nonsensical suggestion to drive her to Palm Springs the day before. He couldn’t believe it had only been a day.

She held up her phone.

“They texted again a few hours ago, or my mom did, at least. ‘Dad is feeling much better, we’re taking it easy today. He wanted a date shake, but I told him no, it wasn’t good for his heart, and he grumbled, but not too much. I promise I’ll keep you posted on what his doctor says. Love you.’ ” She sighed. “I hope that’s a real promise. Maybe it is, now that she’s spooked I’ll just show up, no matter what.”

They both laughed. Ben was weirdly grateful for the traffic on 101; it meant this trip would last at least thirty more minutes. He was hungry and had almost suggested they stop for dinner, but that seemed too dangerous for Anna, especially since they’d gotten lucky when they’d stopped for food around midafternoon. No one had even glanced in her direction.

But he knew as soon as they drove up to her hotel, this was all over.

He held back a sigh and kept driving.

They were both quiet as they drove through San Francisco on the way to her hotel. It had been almost exactly twenty-four hours since they’d left the city, but it seemed like so much had happened in that time.

All too soon, Ben drove up the circular driveway to Anna’s hotel.

“Well, we made it back,” he said, and shook his head at himself. What did that even mean? Why was he even talking?

“We did,” Anna said. A bellman opened her car door, and she nodded her thanks to him, then turned back to Ben.

“Thank you. For . . . well. For everything.” She smiled at him, a small, quiet, private smile. He smiled back at her.

“You’re welcome. It was my pleasure.” He wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t. “Now, get yourself some sleep; you must be exhausted.”

She picked up her tote bag and laughed.

“I was just about to say the same to you.” She got out of the car and waved at him. He wanted to get out, too, to say good-bye, to give her a hug, something, but he knew he couldn’t hug her, and it felt like getting out of the car would just draw more attention to them, so instead he just waved.

“See you soon,” he said.

She nodded quickly.

“Yeah. See you soon.” She took her big movie-star sunglasses out of her bag and slid them on. She turned toward the hotel and walked up the stairs and through the revolving door. She didn’t look back.

Ben thought about calling his brother on his way home, but as much as he couldn’t wait to tell this story, he somehow didn’t feel ready to start. He suddenly felt bone tired, the kind of tired that comes from two seven-plus-hour drives in two days and a very interrupted night of sleep in between.

He glanced at his phone when he walked into his apartment and was surprised by the rush of disappointment he felt when he didn’t have a message from Anna. Why would she have texted him, anyway? He’d just seen her; they’d been together, almost nonstop, for more than twenty-four hours. He rolled his eyes at himself and scrolled through his texts from his brother, from Maddie, from a date from a few weeks back, from a high school friend, then dropped his phone on his nightstand and got in the shower.