children overall?
As far as motherhood was concerned, I could leave it just as well as take it.
Some weeks, Adam didn’t have a need for my sitting services, so we’d hang out instead, ordering takeout and playing with Ethan. I could see how hard it was for him to adjust to Manhattan. He was a nice, good-looking thirty-five-year-old man with a cool job in a fun neighborhood. In theory, he could be out with models every night. But he also had Ethan, and he was too solid of a guy to be serious with any woman who didn’t take an interest in his son.
For more than a year, we were just buddies. Then my birthday happened.
I had sent out invitations to four other couples, a month in advance, for a dinner party at my apartment. I’d need to rent an extra table, and borrow a taxi-trunk full of folding chairs from the office, but I was thrilled to be able to host a bona fide adult dinner party. I was turning twenty-nine. I was done drinking from red Solo cups. I scoured Food & Wine for the perfect menu, something impressive, but still manageable on my own. When I didn’t have a pot large enough to hold the braised short ribs I wanted, I bought one. When Matt asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I snipped a page from the Williams Sonoma catalog and asked him for a white serving platter, and could I please have it the day before the party, just in case something was wrong and I needed to exchange it?
I never did get the platter. Four days before my birthday, Matt dumped me. He said he was young and still having fun, and that my birthday had him realizing that his friends had been right about me all along.
“I thought your friends liked me.”
“They do. But you’re . . . a lot, Chloe. I can’t do this with you.”
“Do what?”
“Be that couple. With the parties and the platters and the Sunday Styles wedding announcement.”
“Wedding? I never said anything about getting married.”
“You didn’t have to. You plan every single thing, and then you’re miserable once it’s over and go looking for the next thing to worry about. I guarantee you, the second this party’s over, you’ll be pressing me about Christmas. And New Year’s. And then an engagement ring on Valentine’s Day.”
I gave Adam the abbreviated version the following night during our regular Wednesday hangout. We were sitting on the floor, putting more effort into the Legos than Ethan was.
“You know what’s really embarrassing? I actually asked him if he could go to the dinner on Saturday anyway.”
“Oof.”
“I know. But now I’m going to be the ninth wheel at my own party. Is it too late to cancel?”
“Do not cancel. Being with your friends will cheer you up. Besides . . .” He reached over and touched my ankle. “You’re smart and successful and pretty nice to look at. You’d have no problems finding another plus-one, if that’s what you wanted.”
The moment sat in the air. His hand felt warm against my skin. I honestly don’t believe I’d ever thought about the possibility before then, but it was there now. I waited for him to say more. To do more, but he went back to fiddling with the castle he was building.
“The last thing I need right now is to grovel for a date,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just leave the empty chair next to me and let my friends nominate potential candidates.”
He showed up at my apartment at six o’clock, because after a year in New York, he knew no one ever started a party before six. He had a gift box from Williams Sonoma. It was the platter I wanted, even though I’d never told him that part.
Nothing happened that night, but we were definitely different than we were before. He wasn’t Nicky’s ex, or Ethan’s dad. He was there for me. It was like we had a pact. It was going to happen. It was inevitable.
5
When my eyes opened the morning after the gala, I saw the crystal typewriter with my name etched into it, next to a tumbler of water and a container of melatonin from Vitamin Shoppe. Last night, I had won a prize. Before I registered anything else, I recognized Adam’s scent, a mix of grocery store soap and something like salt. My right leg was hitched over his thigh, and my face was pressed against his chest. I felt