I finished up in the bathroom in record time and realized when I came out that Meredith still wasn’t up. She’d had bad cramps the night before, so she was probably exhausted. I poured a cup of coffee for her into an insulated camping mug, added her favorite vanilla creamer, and tiptoed into her room. She was a lump of pale pink duvet topped with streaky, dyed blonde hair poking out the top. I put the cup on her bedside table for when she woke up.

Within twenty minutes I’d done my makeup and run a flat iron over my waves to combat the Charleston humidity. I dressed in a navy pencil skirt, blue linen blouse, and stuffed my most comfortable pair of heels into my bag. I hated the archaic dress code at work that women had to wear skirts. It was ludicrous in this day and age. Especially when we went to job sites. But working at such a highly respected firm made me keep my mouth shut.

I took my bag and roll tubes full of my latest plans into the kitchen so I could make breakfast. The sun had finally come up, and golden rays of it slanted through the alley outside and through the window across our worn slip-covered sofa.

“Hey, let’s do a girls’ night tonight.” Tabitha looked over the top of her laptop. “I haven’t been out for ever. Invite Barbara from your office. We can celebrate your promotion and me surviving that call. Oh, wait. Didn’t Mer want to set you up with a new guy from her office?”

I gave a small eye roll. “Yeah. Jed or something.”

“His name is Jed? No. Way too ‘dude bro’ for you.”

I laughed. “You can’t judge someone on their name.”

“I can. And I will. You wouldn’t date someone named Adolf, would you? Anyway,” she barreled on as she often did, waving a hand elaborately in the air. “You need to be with someone who sounds foreign and exotic. Josephine and … Xavier. I like that.” She pronounced it—Zav-ee-yeah.

“Who the heck is Xavier?” I asked, pouring some granola and yoghurt into a bowl.

“The filthy rich Frenchman I have a call with today. That name is … ahhh. I’m not saying him, obviously, but a name like that. Though, wow, he’s hot. You’re named after a queen. Your guy’s name should be just as awesome. Just saying.”

I shook my head with a grin. “You’re hilarious. I believe she was an empress, not a queen. But the name obsession is better than when you were obsessed with matching everyone’s Chinese horoscopes in college.”

“Hey, that’s a real thing.”

Tabs ducked into her room and I called my mother back.

“Ma.”