the house and Floss’s costume, she somehow hadn’t seen it: a teardrop-shaped choking hazard of a diamond, covering Floss’s left ring finger all the way across.
Floss and Aston began taking turns talking, like nervous bridesmaids sharing a toast.
“We’re getting married,” Floss said. “Soon.”
“It’s more than that, though,” Aston said. “We’re, like, new people.”
“Literally new,” said Floss. “You were so right, Orla, that day at the hospital. I needed to take a hard look at myself. To learn what was real. So I did that, and then we got this place—we just, like, want to simplify. We rented it furnished,” she added, in a tone that made we rented it furnished sound like we built it brick by brick and hewed the table before you by hand.
“This is where our new life begins,” Aston said.
Orla looked at Floss. “So you’re moving out of 6D?” she said.
Floss nodded. “My movers will come get the rest of my stuff tomorrow.”
There was more. There was so much more. They had quit drinking, they said proudly, except for wine and champagne at meals, of course. They were getting acupuncture. They had had their auras photographed. They were immersing themselves completely in the study of cathartic movement.
“Is that exercise?” Orla said.
Sharply, they both answered, “No.” They said they went thrice weekly to a loft in Tribeca, to beat their hands against their thighs and scream about what they deserved. Floss thrust out her phone to show Orla a picture of the class’s teacher. It took Orla a long moment to remember where she’d seen the face before. Their teacher was the anxious, overdressed waif from the red carpet where Orla met Floss. She thought of telling Floss this, but Aston was deep into a story that had the pink lines on his chest pulsing, catching the chandelier’s light.
“So class is over, right,” he said, “and Floss and I are just standing there. We’re exhausted. Our throats are raw. Our tunics are see-through, we’re so sweaty. Everyone else has left the room. And we’re just staring at each other. We were thinking the same thing. Then we said it, at the same time.” He beamed. “‘Let’s have a baby.’”
“We told Emily—that’s the teacher—what happened,” Floss said. She flapped her hands. “And she was just like, ‘Oh, you had a shared revelation? That’s just another Tuesday in here! Happens all the time!’”
“So anyway,” Aston said. He put his arm around Floss, who leaned into him. “We’re going for it.”
“Well, cool,” Orla said after a moment. “I mean, congratulations. So, you’re...pregnant, too?”
Aston gave a somber shake of his head, and Floss bit her lip. “No,” she said. “I had surgery when I was young, to get a cyst out, and something went wrong. The doctor was a douchebag. The point is, I can’t.”
“And I want to adopt anyway,” Aston jumped in. “I’d rather. I love kids so much, Orla. Like, I relate to them more.” He reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. “I think I’d be a really good dad.”
This was the part in the story, when Orla looked back, where things slowed to a surreal pace. The part where she could remember all the details in high definition—every one of Floss’s lashes its own blade against her skin, the way Aston’s sweater puckered each time he breathed. It probably wasn’t true that she actually knew these things. It was probably her mind combing for things to cling to, to prove that what happened had actually happened, that Floss really took a breath and said: “And we were thinking that this could be perfect, since you meant to abort yours, anyway.”
It was so quiet, Orla could hear the strokes of the clock above the cabinets. Her heart beat twice to each tick.
“But I didn’t,” she said. “I’m not.”
“But you would have,” Aston said. “If I wasn’t in the hospital. So maybe you could just, like, still pretend that you did, in a way.”
“What?” Orla said.
Floss shot him a look. “We know it’s unorthodox,” she tried.
Orla stood up. She forgot that she was pregnant and on the tighter side of a booth. The table’s edge forced her back down. “I know that you went to a lot of trouble,” she said, “buying these sandwiches. But no. No! I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this—I’m not giving you my baby.”
Floss made her voice sympathetic. “When we discussed it with Emily—”
“When you discussed it with Emily?” The bitch from the red carpet, reincarnated as