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“I used to leave him voice notes from tour buses,” she said, looking into her wine. “Stupid little things. Something funny someone said. A dumb advert I saw at a gas station. Just little things y’know? Then one day I realised that I was recording them and then deleting them before pressing send because he’d stopped replying. They just weren’t funny anymore. I stopped feeling like he cared about those stupid little snapshots of my day. How can you be with someone who isn’t emotionally available?” Harlow looked at me as if she was asking my opinion.

“I don’t think you can,” I said roughly, and she nodded.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Me neither.”

We were quiet for a while, the only sounds were the music coming from the ceiling speakers and the chatter of people seated in other sections.

“You too, huh?” Harlow laughed, discreetly wiping under her eyes. I looked away, pretending to study a picture on the wall.

“Yeah,” I agreed quietly. “Me too.”

“Recently?”

“No. A while ago.”

I flinched when I realised just how long ago it had been. The ache was more like the memory of pain now. Not acute.

“How did you get over it?” she asked.

I turned back to look at her. She had a faint smile, like she expected me to say that I never had.

I sighed, and took a sip of my wine. It tasted faintly sour.

“Honestly, I didn’t for a long time. Longer than it should have taken, frankly,” I scoffed.

“Why?” The bluntness of the question took me by surprise, but then so much of Harlow had done that. I didn’t know if it was her American-ness rubbing against my Britishness, or if it was a result of a person spending so much time being torn apart and publicly inspected had made her less disposed to beat around the bush.

I thought about my answer, rolling it around in my head before I opened my mouth to speak. “At first it was because I was simply too heart broken, you know? It’s sharp, that kind of pain. And big. Too big to see around. It gets in the way of everything.” I let out a little, derisory laugh. “I was in that for a while, and when you’re in that deep you can’t get out, can you?”

Harlow nodded.

“I had to sort of let myself rise to the surface before I could crawl out. And then, when the initial hurt faded, it turned into a kind of grief I didn’t know how to deal with. I’d spent so long defining myself with that relationship. Who I was with him. What my life – my future – would look like because of him. I was constantly in awe of him, and I think I reflected some of that onto myself, unintentionally.”

Harlow made a humming noise that I took to be sympathetic.

“When we broke up,” I continued, “all of that was ripped away from me. It was like when Peter Pan loses his shadow, and he feels like a part of himself is missing?” I raised my eyes to look at Harlow, to see if she understood. She wore a sad smile.

“Anyway,” I exhaled. “That wasn’t his fault. I did that to myself. It was easier to accept that version of myself than to find out who I was outside of being his girlfriend.” I pinched my lips together and looked down at my half-drunk wine. “I know that probably doesn’t make any sense.”

I took a sip from my glass and Harlow shot me a look.

“He’s famous, isn’t he?”

I spat out half of my mouthful and choked on the other half. Harlow rounded the booth to thump me on the back. Tears streamed down my face as I coughed.

Harlow laughed. “I get it,” she said. “I’ve been there, remember? There’s some things – some dynamics – that just don’t happen in normal relationships. So either he was married, or he was famous.”

“He isn’t married,” I spluttered indignantly, and then realised immediately that I’d walked right into an admission. From Harlow’s triumphant expression, she knew it, too.

Fuck.

Harlow patted me on the back, gentler this time and returned to her seat.

“Yeah, I figured as much. Don’t worry. I won’t ask who it was, or what happened. We all get to keep some things to ourselves.”

She waited until I’d stopped wheezing, leaning back in her seat and gently swirling the wine in her glass. “What happened next? After the break-up, I mean.”

“Do you really wanna know?” I stared at her. “Isn’t this a bit on the nose for you?”