“We don’t need instruments to make music,” he said. And we didn’t. Every day with him felt like a new song, a new melody.

He touched my cheek and looked into my eyes. The rhythm of our playing filled me. I leaned toward him. Our lips touched, and the music inside me crescendoed. We kissed and kissed.

We lay together on his bed, like we had been for the last months, touching each other, exploring each other’s bodies with our fingers and lips.

Then he pulled off my tank top, I tugged down his jeans. We both slid off our shoes. And the world was gone again. It was just me and him and the harmony of our breathing. It was skin against skin and breath against breath.

I felt his fingers and his tongue, and then he was back kissing my mouth and he whispered, “Do you want to?”

We hadn’t yet. I wanted to be sure of him, sure of us. He’d given me the time I needed to be certain, understanding that this wasn’t a choice I could take back or undo. And now I was. So I answered with a kiss of my own and a soft “yes.”

He reached over and fumbled in the pocket of his guitar case for a condom. I felt lost without him against me. And then he was kissing me and I was wrapping myself around him, pulling him closer. We rocked into the heat and the warmth and the music.

“Are you really sure?” he asked.

“Never surer,” I said.

I felt the fan blowing warm air across my skin.

And then I felt him, inside me.

And I was part of someone else for the first time.

8

Emily and Ezra smiled that whole day.

“We need to do things!” Ezra said. “We need to prepare!”

Emily laughed, swinging their clasped hands as they ambled down 2nd Avenue together, past restaurants and shops, dry cleaners and convenience stores, the city traffic humming beside them. “We have months to prepare. Plus I’m sure Ari has a list of what we need, filed away in her folder of spreadsheets.” Ari was always organized, the librarian of the family, keeping track of everyone’s schedules and making shopping lists and putting photographs in albums, labeled with the proper date. “We can just enjoy it now. Enjoy being happy.” Emily’s photos were in a jumbled shoebox somewhere under her bed.

“Let’s take our embryo on its first trip to a jazz club. I think there’s an open mic thing going on this afternoon. I want to make sure our child loves jazz.”