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Madelyn winced but nodded. “Word had started getting around.”

Kat closed her eyes. For so long, she’d blamed Madelyn for damaging her reputation with directors. But if this was true, Madelyn had just hastened the inevitable. The press would have found out eventually, with or without her.

If Kat was really being honest with herself, how much had that interview actually affected her chances of making it as an adult actor? An eating disorder was a minor scandal in Hollywood. The much bigger problem was that directors didn’t believe audiences could see her as anyone but Lily Carlson.

Had Madelyn’s interview really ruined her career? Or had Kat just wanted someone she could blame?

She opened her eyes. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I shouldn’t have cut you out like that. I was scared. Of the network and our fans and my career and—all of it.”

“I know,” Madelyn said. “Trust me, I know.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds, Kat’s head spinning with her new revelation.

“Do you want to talk about whatever’s going on with you?” Madelyn asked. “Since clearly you’re in the middle of something?”

Kat considered the question. Jocelyn had always told her not to tell people the full story, just in case they did exactly what Madelyn had done so many years ago.

The more people knew about you, the more you left yourself open to scandal and hurt.

But she was tired of holding things in all the time.

She was tired of not trusting people. And if anyone could understand why she’d done the things she’d done, it might be Madelyn.

So Kat told her everything.

“I really fucked up,” she said when she’d finished.

“I don’t think you fucked up,” Madelyn said. “Or, well, you did fuck up. But I don’t think you fucked up in the way you think you did.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, are you actually mad at yourself for quitting that play? No offense, but it sounds like pretentious bull crap. And that director was a dick. Did you really want to spend the next four months pretending to be a vagina onstage?”

“No, but it would have helped transition my image, so my career—”

Madelyn waved a hand, cutting her off. “There’s no one way to save a career,” she said.

“When my agent got me the Qties audition, my manager told me not to take it. She thought the show would flop. But it was the first time I found myself actually excited about a script. The first time I wanted to do a project not because of how it would help my career but because I liked it. So I did it anyway. And guess what? The show was a hit. We’re three seasons in with no sign of stopping. ”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t always happen,” Kat argued.

“Exactly,” Madelyn said, leaning forward. “Because this industry is unpredictable. You can have the biggest names and the biggest budget for a movie and it can still flop. So why not do something you actually enjoy?”

Kat shrugged uncomfortably.

“I also don’t think you fucked up by screaming at me in that restaurant,” Madelyn said.

Kat laughed. She couldn’t help it.

“I mean, it wasn’t the best, ” Madelyn said, chuckling, too. “Obviously it wasn’t the ideal location for that conversation. But how long have you wanted to call me a bitch? You’ve been holding on to this anger for four years, and you’ve never once done anything about it. Didn’t that feel good?”

“I don’t know, I was a little distracted by the fact that every news outlet in the country was writing about my public breakdown.”

Madelyn’s face turned serious. “I know that’s really hard. But also…the press is going to write shitty things no matter what. You can’t let it get to you too much.”

“Sure.” Kat rolled her eyes. “Okay, so, if ruining my career and reputation wasn’t how I fucked up, what was?”

“You didn’t stick to your guns!” Madelyn said, banging her fist down on the couch cushions beside her.

“You’ve done all this great work lately to figure out who you actually are and what you actually want, but when things got bad, you reverted right back to being the obedient child star again.

Like, sure, things got a little messy. But being a human is messy!

You’ve literally never let yourself be messy in your life, so you freaked when you started to see the consequences.

But if you’re done shoving down your feelings, you have to deal with some hard shit. ”

“You can’t be serious,” Kat said. “You think the mistake I made was…”

“Breaking up with someone you’re clearly in love with,” Madelyn said.

Kat put her glass down on the coffee table. She felt a little sick. “Technically, she broke up with me.”

“Yeah, but did you fight for her?”

Kat didn’t answer. Of course she hadn’t. Because Jocelyn had told her not to.

“If I dated Jude and only took the roles I wanted,” Kat said, tentatively, trying to figure out how to phrase what she wanted to say.

“If I started choosing my happiness over the biggest paycheck or the biggest role…a lot of people would say I was failing. Even if I was making the choices I wanted to make. They’d look at me and see a child star who didn’t make it. ”

“Yeah.” Madelyn held out one palm in front of her.

“They would. Industry people would whisper behind your back. Magazines would make jokes about it. People would leave snide comments on your social media. But”—she held out the other palm, then moved her hands up and down like she was comparing their weight—“you’d be happy. ”

Kat felt a crack through her heart. She lowered her head.

“Hey, hey. Come here.” Madelyn held out her arm and Kat leaned against her friend’s shoulder for the first time in four years.

“It’s just—If you’re right, if this is all industry bullshit,” Kat said through tears, “then I broke up with Jude for nothing. I hurt her so, so badly, for nothing.”

“Maybe you can fix it.”

Kat shook her head against Madelyn’s shoulder. “She hates me.”

Madelyn chuckled. “It is really hard to hate you, Kat. Also, people forgive each other. Just look at us.”

Kat sat up. She grabbed a rainbow flag cocktail napkin off the table and blew her nose into it.

“You love her, right?” Madelyn asked. Kat hesitated, the napkin still held to her nose. Then she nodded. “Well, then you have to at least try, don’t you?”

Kat wadded up the soggy napkin in her hand and stared at it. How could a relationship ever come back from the things they’d said to each other? The things Kat had done?

But Madelyn was right. Kat did love Jude.

So, didn’t that mean she had to try?