“Mom, there’s something I have to tell you.” I felt oddly calm now. I checked my face in the rearview mirror; it was all puffy post-cry.

“Is everything okay?” She immediately panicked at the slightest hint that things weren’t “nice” and “exciting.”

“Sort of. Except I’m not moving to New York anymore.”

“What do you mean you’re not moving to New York anymore?” my mother asked. It had been all set up: she was going to fly from Athens to L.A., get a rental car at the airport and come get me, and then we were going to drive up the West Coast to Seattle, a road trip in honor of the next stage of my life. She’d already made reservations at places she wanted to stay in Big Sur, San Francisco, and Portland. I could only imagine the hours she’d spent online researching the best hotels, restaurants, and sights all along Route One. I already had that ticket to fly from Seattle to New York two weeks later, to start my new life.

“Well, you see, there’s been a slight change of plans,” I said. “Adrian and I broke up. We ended the engagement.”

“Why, Lize? What happened?” I could hear the shock and horror in my mother’s voice. It was more obvious than the sun high up above me in the parking lot, pounding through my windshield. Sitting in the driver’s seat, I was alone amongst a sea of parked cars, their owners busily working away in their entertainment industry jobs in air conditioned offices around the neighborhood. I suddenly felt completely, totally lost – yet another relationship refugee in Los Angeles, fresh off the boat from love gone wrong.

“I guess we’re just too young. It was all happening too fast, too soon.” I had to bite down on my hand to stop from losing it all over again.

“I’m going to come there and we’ll figure out what you’re going to do.”

“I know what I’m going to do. I’m staying.”

“I’m keeping my reservation and I’ll see you in a week. Don’t go anyplace.”

“Okay, Mom. I have to go back into the Perilous Films office now.”

“You should hurry up and get them to offer you a paying job. Oh dear.”

“I’m working on things.”

“Oh, dear,” she repeated.

I went straight to the bathroom and washed my face. When I emerged, Erin was eyeing me from the entryway of her cubicle. She gestured towards the mountains of directors’ reels that still needed to be alphabetized. Sam & Sean had to be separated from Nzingha Stewart and Antoine Fuqua was all mixed up with Michael Bay. It should have seemed trivial given that my entire life’s plan was unraveling, but for some reason it rendered the miscategorized reels magnified in importance. I had to organize those reels. I had to organize those reels like it was my one purpose in life. I was put on this earth to organize those reels. And so I alphabetized the directors’ reels – with a brain surgeon’s focus and precision – all afternoon.