BRENT TAYLOR'S APARTMENT

Molly's head tips with concern. "What? Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course." Brent folds his hands together, rubbing the bandages against each other. "It's the divorce -- I'm going ahead with it. Sarah's getting the papers as soon as possible."

Molly feels a strange wash of relief at the news. "Good for you," she manages, still working through the news in her head. "That's really going to be best, for both of you."

"I think so. It should've happened months ago. Then maybe that whole fiasco in the hospital wouldn't have had to happen."

"Maybe." Molly's slow steps carry her to a shelf next to the entertainment center. There are a handful of framed pictures there: Brent, Danielle, and Josh with their father when they were much younger. Josh's high school graduation picture. Brent with his father at his wedding ... but no pictures of Sarah from that day.

"Maybe this had to happen," Molly says, still pulling her focus away from the pictures. "To really make it clear that it had to end."

Brent seems reluctant to accept that. "Yeah. Could be."

"Seriously. Sarah was fighting the divorce so hard when you tried to bring it up before. Maybe now she'll at least realize it's for the best."

"I hope so. I really do." Brent's chest inflates with an enormous breath and then relaxes as he lets it all out. "This needs to stop. It's been dragging on forever. It's not good for her. It's not good for either of us. It's like I'm stuck in this gigantic rut and I need to haul myself out of it."

"Yeah, tell me about ruts ..."

"What?"

"I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I'm just ... stuck."

"In what sense?"

"In ..." She glances up at him and their eyes catch again. Molly jerks away quickly, almost immediately. "Everything. My personal life. My job. Everything. For goodness' sake, Brent, I'm almost thirty years old and I'm still living with my parents!"

He ponders that for a few seconds. "So move out. It's not like you don't have the money."

"True." With a shake of the head, she lets her whole body drop down onto the couch. "I think I'm avoiding it, I really do."

"Avoiding it?"

"Yeah. If I move out now -- if I put myself back in my own apartment and get back into a routine that's totally my own -- it's like ... I don't know ... like picking a track for my life. That's going to be the way the rest of my life goes. At least being at my parents' is like limbo. I can keep putting it off."

"I can see what you mean." He eases down onto the couch beside her. "So what would it take to make you feel like you were on the right track -- the track you want to be on?"

"Changes. Lots of 'em," she says wearily, as if the very thought exhausts her.

"Like ... ?"

"Like work. This is not the job I want, Brent. Remember that awesome job I had before the whole Craig thing? That job was my dream. Or at least it was a stepping stone to my dream. Working at Willis is like--it's like sitting down at the beginning of some absolutely random path and not caring where it's headed because I have no intention of following it anyway."

"So go for it."

"Easier said than done."

"No, seriously. You've got your parents, so you've got room to go out on a limb." He pauses, meeting Molly's eyes again to convince her that he's not speaking nonsense. "If you want to work in fashion, go for it. Look for a job. If it's meant to be, it'll happen, and if not, at least you'll know that."

"Yeah. You're right." A new light is dawning over her face, as though she's never quite thought of it this way before, and suddenly it all makes sense. "Thanks. I needed to hear that from someone."

He shrugs as the grin returns. "There's nothing I'm good for if not a swift kick in the pants."

"I guess so," she says, her smile radiating as they lapse into a comfortable silence. Just a few words have made everything seem so much freer, so much more possible. Brent was able to do that for her for so long.

Only now is she realizing just how much she has missed that. And missed him.

One . Two . Three . Four . Five . Six

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