As she drove down Federal, she unloaded the whole shebang. For a while, there was only silence in her earbuds—so all Joey heard was the guy outside dressed in a hot dog costume, talking in a strange voice that was presumably that of a hot dog, distributing flyers by the Publix where she’d gone with Leo the night before.

“So Lily doesn’t know?” Siya finally asked.

“Not yet. I can’t…oh God. I wish I could do something to protect her from it.”

“I can’t believe your mom. I wish you’d told me sooner, Jo.”

“I just…it’s been a lot the past couple, few days. Si…I’ve been bingeing again.” Siya would know what that meant. How hard Joey had worked to free herself, and here she was, right back there again.

Silence for a while on the other end. Finally Siya said, “Joey, you know what I think?”

“That I’m falling apart?” she whispered.

“No. Not at all.” Siya said it so fiercely that Joey almost believed it. “What I think is that you’re basically the strongest person to deal with all this right now. And it’s so unfair it’s come before your wedding. But you still get to have a happy ending. That part, the most important part, hasn’t changed.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I know. And you know what a binge means, if we drill it down?”

“I’m going to look gross in my dress?”

“No, Jo. Stop. It means you ate a lot of food. That’s all. You don’t need to assign it some profound meaning.”

“I ate a lot a lot.”

“So, you ate a lot a lot. So fucking what? If I was in your shoes, there wouldn’t be enough pizza in the world. I think what you’re forgetting is that there’s a cycle to everything. A beginning, a middle, and an end. And maybe you’re in the middle right now, of something, but there’s no law that says you have to leap to the end. Because you have to wade through the middle first.”

“But I don’t want to be in the middle anymore! How do you know I’m even going to get to the end?”

“Maybe the end is overrated. And also maybe we’re talking in riddles now. The bottom line is you and Grant, forever. Just stay focused on that.”

“Yeah.” As Joey said it, a song came on. She didn’t know what song exactly, because songs, their lyrics and their titles, had always eluded her. She only knew that she’d heard it a hundred million times, and its familiar happy tune confided something small.

“Jo, can you promise me you’ll stop beating yourself up? That you’ll cut yourself some slack.”

Joey gazed down at her puffy stomach. “I’ll try. Si, can I…?”

“I just got home. Get your butt over here.”