Action

“Trust me, with your penchant for drama two days is a very long time.”

“What did you do?”

Marianne sighed heavily.

“Fine, after Jack upset you and stomped all over your dreams, I may have had a word with him.”

Davina shot to her feet.

“You did not!”

Marianne at least had the decency to look guilty.

“It was bad enough that you lost your job and the movie was over, but the thing that made you most upset was that Jack had made fun of you. I tried to fix it.”

“That wasn’t the thing that made me most upset. How could you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, you wandere

d around the house gathering equipment to return to the studio mumbling to yourself that Jack didn’t even know you, that he didn’t understand you, that he made fun of you. Maybe there was a hint in that.”

“Oh.” Davina sat back down.

“This isn’t my fault,” Marianne said. “It’s yours. You act like the world is ending just because your movie was a failure. But, as today clearly showed you, you are not defined by your acting ambitions.”

“Huh,” Davina said.

They sat in silence for a while. Davina stared out into the garden and wondered if the place would ever feel the same without Jack lurking in the bushes.

“I only ever wanted to be an actress,” she said at last. “It was my dream.”

“Time to get a new dream,” Marianne said primly.

Davina blew her a raspberry.

“I’m going home,” Marianne said wearily. “Why don’t you write a list of all the things you love to do and all the things you’re good at and come up with a new dream?”

“It isn’t that easy.”

“Fine, just sit there feeling sorry for yourself instead.”

Marianne picked up her coat from the chair by the door. She smiled sympathetically as she left the room.

Davina nuked the rest of lasagna left from lunch and sat at the table to eat. There was a pen and notepad on the table in front of her so she reached for it. Damn Marianne and her oh so practical ideas. She made a list headed ‘Things I love’ and started to write. Acting, definitely. Teaching, surprisingly. Baking, absolutely. Feeding people. Messing in people’s lives. Inspiring people. Getting her hair done. Shopping. Eating. Jack.

She dropped her pen and stared at the list.

Jack. Where the heck did that come from?

She looked at the list again. It clearly said: Things I love. And there was his name. She read the list out loud. It all made sense until she came to Jack’s name. She couldn’t. She didn’t. It wasn’t possible. He was an imbecile. A moron. Annoying and rude. And sexy. And funny. Cute. Maybe a little sweet. She shook her head. Her palms began to sweat. She left the rest of her lasagna and started to pace.

Surely if she was in love she would feel happy about it? Mainly, she felt nauseous and her head hurt. She sat back down at the table. Her mind ran through the events from the past two weeks. There had definitely been chemistry between them, chemistry that went bang when they got too close, but that didn’t mean it was love. She wasn’t ready for love. She was waiting. For what she wasn’t sure, but definitely until she was ready.

She stood in a panic. Surely a woman knew when she was ready for love?

This didn’t make any sense.

There was only one thing to do. Confront the problem. She rooted around in the paperwork the lawyer had sent over telling her that her landlord had changed and found Jack’s home phone number. Without thinking it through, she dialled.