And, Jess remembered, she and Alec broke up about an hour before she presented her thesis to the entire mathematics department, when she was six months pregnant with Juno. She’d shoved all of her anger and disappointment aside, gone into the presentation with an enormous smile and beautifully designed slides, and gotten an A.

One look at Fizzy curled up in a ball on her couch, eyes red-rimmed, hair in an uncharacteristically messy bun, and a familiar wall slid into place.

She sat down, pulling one of Fizzy’s bare feet into her lap. “Tell me.”

Reaching up to wipe her nose, Fizzy said simply, “He’s married.”

“Who’s married?”

Fizzy turned her watery dark eyes up to Jess’s face. “Rob.”

“Banker Rob?”

“Yeah.”

“Married? To a person?”

“Yeah.”

Jess stared at her, disbelieving. “Wasn’t he Daniel’s brother’s friend? How did no one say anything to you?”

“Apparently he’s, like, a friend of a friend of a friend, and Rob got married sometime in the past two years, when they hadn’t been hanging out as much.”

“What a—a garbage human.” Jess’s jaw hung open. “How did you find out?”

“He found me at Twiggs and told me.”

“He told you in public?”

Fizzy nodded, grim. “He sat in your chair.”

She gasped. “How dare he!”

“I know.”

“So what did you do?”

Fizzy took a deep, fortifying breath. “I got up, asked Daniel for a pitcher of ice water, and dumped it in Rob’s lap.”

“Applause,” Jess whispered, impressed.

“I think he started to freak out that he was going to get caught. One night in Little Italy we ran into someone he knew, and he introduced me to the guy as his ‘friend Felicity,’ which at the time, I was like—‘That’s fair, we’re pretty new still,’ but now I know why.” Fizzy’s face crumpled. “I really liked him, Jess, and you know me,” she said, hiccupping, “I never like anyone. I cooked for him, and talked about books with him, and we had inside jokes—and he’s fucking married. And I swear he wanted credit for coming clean with me. Like, he was genuinely shocked that I was so pissed.” She wiped her nose again.

“Come here.” Jess shifted Fizz’s foot away and pulled the whole Fizzy into her arms, squeezing tight while her friend cried.

“You know the crazy thing?” Fizzy asked, her voice muffled by Jess’s shirt.

“What?”

“We just sent in his spit samples.”

“To GeneticAlly?” Jess asked, and Fizzy nodded. “I thought you weren’t going to do that.”

Fizzy wailed. “We weren’t!”

“God,” Jess said, “what a dumbass. What was he expecting to happen?”

“Right?” Her best friend laughed through a sob. “And now, what if I find out that we’re, like, perfect for each other, and it doesn’t matter because he’s married? I don’t want to know if we’re supposed to be together!”

The feelings from the other room peeked around Jess’s neat little compartmentalized corner, asking if it was time to come out yet. Jess shook her head. It was not.