“You have chicken stock next to coffee beans and ketchup with soup. It is exactly that bad.”

“Which is why I need your organizational magic.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough.”

“Anyway. Eat, Pray, Love, and…Joel Gott. Yes?”

“Agreed.” She withdraws the bottle, uncorks it, brings it and two stemless wineglasses over, sits on the couch beside me, and pours us each a generous glass, and by generous I mean nearly to the brim. Then, she grabs her gavel—an actual antique gavel, once used in an actual courthouse—and slams it down three times. “I hereby declare this Period Party in session. May our cramps be gentle and our bleeding light.”

“Amen, and so shall it be,” I intone, getting into the spirit of things.

We find the movie we’d agreed on, get it going, and share the gallon of ice cream while slurping wine; we have an ongoing contest to see who could slurp the loudest before the other one gets pissed off. So far she always wins, thanks to misophonia.

Tess is my best friend, and really, my only friend. Adrian and I have lived in Atlanta for six years, but my work schedule sort of precludes a social life. Tess and I went to college together, and she and her husband Clint moved down here from Pennsylvania shortly after Adrian and I moved here from North Carolina. The moment her moving truck arrived, we picked up our friendship where it had left off. During college, she and I and the girls in the rooms around ours instituted what we called the Period Party, where we’d get together once a month, usually around the same time because these things tend to synch, and eat garbage and get drunk and watch movies and commiserate about nature and men and life. When Tess moved near me, we started it up again, just the two of us.

We finish the ice cream and the wine—well, the first bottle—and have to take a pause break to take care of bathroom issues related to the reason for getting together. Tess brings another bottle, but this time it’s not wine, it’s tequila.

I frown at the bottle of Patrón. “Um. Are we escalating this party to upper management?”

She nods. “I got an email while I was in the bathroom.”

“At ten fifty-five at night?”

“From Clint.”

“He’s in Chicago, right?”

“Supposedly.” Her eyes are red-rimmed.

“Oh. Oh no.”

“He’s filing.”

“What? For divorce? Why?”

She sits down, pours tequila into her wineglass, shoots it, hissing. “I guess these business trips he’s been going on for the last few years haven’t been all entirely business. He’s been seeing someone, and by seeing I mean fucking. From his department, I guess.”

“Tess. God, no.” I wipe my face, as if to wipe away disbelief. “And he’s filing?”