After a long peach-scented bubble bath, Joy selects a silk pajama short set in a deep burgundy color for bed. Her full-body skin care routine takes exactly seventeen minutes and she uses a satin headband around her edges to keep her hairline neat. Her braids are only a week old—she’s hoping they’ll last a full three before they need to be redone.

Usually by now, Malcolm has called to bother her or sent several good night texts in a row before giving up and calling her anyway. She keeps checking her phone, but there’s nothing. He’s waiting for her answer. She knows he is.

The added weight of his expectations sends her hurtling even faster into her internal depths. At times, she used to think he was rubbing it in her face—that he knew how she felt and kept trying to tell her without telling her it was never going to happen. Joy would never be one of the friends he wanted to jump then fall into more with. Friends like Summer are different from her, like there’s a boundary she’s never going to see the other side of.

But that’s not Malcolm. In her heart, she knows he would never do something like that to her. They’re a perfect match on paper. It’s reality that keeps crumpling it and doing a trick shot straight into the garbage can.

Joy crawls into bed with Pepper, scrolling aimlessly through a streaming catalog until Julia Roberts’s exquisite smile catches her eye. My Best Friend’s Wedding. She remembers enough of the movie to know she’s never really seen it. She can’t recall the ending—if Julia’s character is successful in the end.

“This is going to bum us out,” she says to Pepper, who has already begun to snore. “Lightweight.”

The movie captures Joy’s attention immediately. Wide awake, she watches in rapt fascination as Julia’s character, Jules, executes every underhanded trick in the book to win her best friend so he’ll marry her instead.

“Michael’s chasing Kimmy. You’re chasing Michael. Who’s chasing you? Nobody. Get it?”

Joy instantly disintegrates into a puddle of sobs. God, that line lampooned her straight through the heart and yanked her back to the surface with deadly force.

Body racked with sobs, she covers her face with a pillow to muffle her misery. She hits the volume button, turning the movie up in hopes that her neighbors won’t hear her instead. “I knew watching this was a bad idea,” she says in a high-pitched whine. She’s so hurt. She’ll cry forever, or until her dehydrated body crumbles into dust. Whichever comes first.