“Heather, you carry these around with you?”

She laughed. “You never know!”

Katie smiled and took her hand. “Don’t get me started,” she said, speaking quietly. “Honestly, sometimes when we’re coming back from the cinema, she’ll see a couple kissing outside a pub or something and offer them a condom.”

The table erupted into roars while Heather shrugged. “What? Super gonorrhea is becoming resistant to antibiotics.”

“Can we save the super gonorrhea chat for after my lasagna?” Ben asked, and we all laughed again.

We got through our first three bottles of wine, then another three. Rarely, nobody was pregnant, and everyone seemed in the mood to drink heavily, the air growing thicker with companionship as we all got collectively more inebriated. While we waited for the lasagna to settle before serving, the men grouped together at one end of the table and started inevitably talking about football. Speaking so loudly and with such arrogant authority that everyone else sort of had to listen.

“Yeah, so Everton’s chances tomorrow aren’t looking great,” Douglas said. “We just keep choking it.”

“Same with Arsenal,” Frederick added, nodding seriously, his mouth a ripe blackberry from the stain of wine. “Arsenal are so unpredictable. It’s bloody frustrating.”

“You’re frustrated?” Ben added. I always fancied him, on average, forty percent less when he talked about football. “Try being a Derby supporter. I swear, there’s only so long you can psychologically handle being an underdog.”

I saw Heather sigh and she leaned over the table to the women, almost setting her red hair alight on a candle. “Is it just me, or is it crazy that football chat is taken seriously when it’s basically astrology for men? Having these weird identity markers you’re effectively born into, and then constantly discussing what that means for your fate?”

Jessica’s eyes were on Heather, a huge smile tugging the corners of her mouth. “Oh my God, that is so true,” she whispered back.

“Right? Yet they never have mercury going into retrograde as a news segment, do they?”

And all the women cracked up laughing, just as the oven timer went off. “I think it’s time for lasagna,” I said. “I’ll go serve up.”

“I’ll help you.” Jessica stood with me just as Ben was faux pretending that he wanted to help. I got out a stack of warmed plates from the oven, thanking Jessica as she started expertly scooping cubes of food onto them and adding string beans.

“OK, so I’m actually obsessed with Heather,” she said. “I want to be her.”

I laughed. “We all want to be her... Well maybe we don’t. She rubs a lot of people up the wrong way. But she doesn’t give a shit.”

“Exactly. Not giving a shit. It’s... I love it. I’m going to channel her for now and always,” Jessica said, and she was even more confident once we left the kitchen. I marveled at what a pinch of Heather does to a person.