“No,” I say.

“Then why were you such a dick in the car?”

“Why was I a dick?”

“Don’t make it about the word,” she says. “You know what I mean.”

“Love, you’re the one being a dick.”

“Very mature,” she says. “Look, something is just fucked up and you’re shutting down and it’s bullshit and I can’t take it right now.”

“So don’t,” I say.

“You’re still gonna try and tell me you’re not being a dick.”

I shrug. Forty’s up ahead on the corner, waving to us.

She sighs. “I don’t have time for this.”

“For me,” I say. This is happening so fast and her eyeliner looks like war paint.

“Joe,” she says. “This isn’t good.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means I have so much pressure on me right now and you’re adding to it instead of helping me.”

“I’m adding to it,” I repeat. I want to throw her over my shoulder but she doesn’t want that anymore. She doesn’t want me anymore.

“After the show, we need to talk,” she says. And that is how you know it’s over. Need is not want. Your girlfriend wants to talk to you but the girl who doesn’t love you just needs to talk to you and I guess I should have known. She picked me up so quick, so smooth. Now she’ll drop me, so quick, so smooth.

I tell her to go and she says whatever and runs to her brother and Milo and the three of them start talking Boots and Puppies. Monica is here now, too late.

“What’s up?” she asks. I can’t deal with her generic shit right now.

“Nothing,” I say. My heart hurts.

“Cool,” she says. “I have been so crazy getting ready to jam, you know? My temp agency is not very cool about people going away and stuff. They need to chill.”

“Where are you going?”

She is puzzled. But she is always puzzled. “Location,” she says, like I should know. “Aren’t you coming too?”

I look at her. I don’t know about location. And this is how I know what Love needs to talk to me about. She needs to tell me that it’s over, that she’s not bringing me to location.

Monica bites her lip. “Oops,” she says. “I assumed Love told you. Forty asked me to go yesterday. Dude, don’t get all worked up. Let’s have fun!”

But I can’t have fun. I am too good for this shit. I want to end this first, beat Love to the punch. I want to smash all her fucking tennis racquets into the grass court until they splinter. We spent the whole summer together and she doesn’t even have the decency to not invite me. She doesn’t look back as we round the corner and her new jeans are so tight, I hope she gets a yeast infection.

She links arms with Milo and they greet Seth Rogen and his wife, air kisses, hugs. She isn’t motioning for me to come over. And now I have to have a reunion with Calvin. He has the night off and he’s here, hugging me. There’s a new small potbelly underneath his Henderson shirt and I’d like to think that Love is watching me reunite with him, wishing that I would make an introduction, but I know better. Her friends are famous. She doesn’t need me. Calvin cracks a tasteless joke about how I hit the jackpot and I don’t laugh.

Monica checks the time on her Google wristwatch. Calvin grabs her arm. She giggles. “It’s a present,” she says. “I could never, like, get this.”

“From your boyfriend?” he asks.

She nods. But she flirts. “He saw it on my Pinterest. He can be really sweet when he wants to be.”

Calvin looks at me. “Where’s your watch, JoeBro?”

I tell him it’s in the shop and he starts to hit on Monica and they’re talking surfboards and eBay and it’s increasingly obvious they’re going to fuck. There is so much change, too much change, and everything I built is falling apart and Calvin is programming Monica’s number into his phone. I should have left when Love said we need to talk. She is laughing too hard at James Franco’s jokes as Milo accepts congratulatory hugs from Justin Long. This is supposed to be a tribute to a dead man and instead it’s a bunch of boy-men in moth-eaten T-shirts laughing at their own jokes, cocky fucks who get paid to make jokes, get pussy because they get paid to be funny. I can’t breathe.

It’s time to go inside. I don’t sit with actress Love. She’s in the Important People Section directly across from me with the James Franco people, between Milo and Forty. Milo is wearing the Four Seas Ice Cream T-shirt he was wearing the first night at Chateau. I bet they went there after he popped Love’s cherry. Everyone around me is going on Insta and Twitter and Vine to share snapshots of the people across from us, the celebs.

Monica elbows me. “Grab and pass,” she says.

I grab and pass and it’s a single sheet of paper with the lyrics to “Coming Up Easy” by Paolo Nutini, a hipster Scotsman who fucks models and makes cool music. I look at Monica. “It was Henderson’s favorite song,” she says. “We’re all gonna sing along. He made a joke about it once, like he wanted a singing thing. Amazing, right?”

It’s bullshit and Henderson’s favorite song was either “Oh What a Night” or “Sherry” and I want to tell them they’re all wrong. I knew him best because I killed him. His tastes were more in line with middle-aged Americans who drive Buicks and buy Disney vacation packages on Expedia and I am so sick of this city, everyone pretending to be cool, even in death.

The lights go down and the “tribute” begins with Milo jogging onto the fucking stage. Monica finds Calvin on Facebook and Love claps for Milo onstage. He waves for more applause instead of telling everyone to stop and Love hoots and everything is ending. I don’t know her anymore and we don’t need to talk. I’m not dead or blind. I see her cheering for him, choosing him. This black box cage is real and I barely recognize her anyway with her hair. It’s ending, our relationship, the applause.

“Welcome, friends and fans,” Milo begins. I hate the word fan. It’s almost as bad as follower. He raises the sheet of paper with the lyrics. “We’re gonna start this night out the right way,” he says. “The way Henderson would want it, in song.”

The screaming. I think my ears are broken. Love laughs at Milo’s bad jokes and Monica whispers that Twitter is blowing up and Love is going to dump me after the show. She’s lost interest in me. She became an actress. Or maybe she was always an actress, like Amy was. Maybe I got stupid the second I got aspirations. I cringe to think of the movies I wrote, the way I jumped into business with Forty. Fuck it. Fuck all of it.

The house lights flicker, the show’s about to start, and Love licks her little lips, the ones that never met my cock. I clench my program. In that book A General Theory of Love, the good relationships are defined by two chairs, side by side. Love and I are facing each other and yet she is not looking at me. Instead she’s leaning into Milo. Her shoulders are relaxed and she was probably dying for this moment. She’s got her movie. She’s got her director. She doesn’t need me now. Milo elbows her to look at something in his phone and she laughs at it, whatever it is. I don’t know. I’m too far away.

We need to talk. No, we don’t, Love. You want to ice me out and make me sit on the other fucking side of the room while you look in Milo’s phone and let him put his hand on your thigh? Fine. Have it your way. Love takes Milo’s hand as she sings along to “Coming Up Easy” and I bury my face in my hands. Monica asks what’s wrong.

“Nosebleed,” I say.

“Yikes,” she says. “I told Forty his coke is not as good as he thinks it is. Calvin says you guys have a pretty good hookup here.”

I’m too depressed to discuss Dez’s talent as a drug supplier and I tell Monica I have to go and she says cool and the Villagers are irritated as I squeeze by. It’s tight as an airplane and my dick is in all their faces and when I get outside onto the street, I send Love a text message: I got a nosebleed. I’m gonna go to the Pantry and get a coffee. I miss you. I don’t know what happened.