Better Half

These are two stories about love and loss, the first better half is about Anya a Russian girl who moved to America and married simply to get away from her old life. She married Ryan someone who in the first scene throws a jar full of coins at her. She originally met him at her job in a diner, he looked like the "most nervous person" out of his group of friends who were known to the diner's staff as "the Retard Party". She apparently married him as "a favor" and hoped for emotion later on.
Anya is in the process of becoming a resident, the constant fighting with her husband which eventually leads to his "accidental" abuse causes her to leave him and seek residency on her own. The latter part of the story focuses more on the fact that she has a restraining order out against Ryan and yet still goes after him. Her lawyer made it very clear that she shouldn't even talk to him, yet they still end up sleeping together on several occasions. Ryan tries to make the relationship work at several points in the story buying her a juicer towards the end and apologizing for his "accidental" abuse of her earlier but Anya seems to not want to hear it and actually picks a fight with Ryan over the gift.
The title Better Half is some kind of a misnomer because as Ryan pointed out Anya never thought the marriage "was real." The question in this story is whether or not Anya really needed Ryan. Sure she went back to him after several months of being separated with a restraining order still against him, but was that her still being in love with him (if she ever was at all) or was it simply because she was so lonely. Towards the end of the story Anya seems to regret her choice of leaving Ryan behind, she feels like she is seeing him constantly and always checking just to find out that he really is gone.