Gabe looked down at the baby and put a finger on top of her ear, just peeking up from the swaddle. “Hello, little Lydia. Welcome to New York City.” He looked up at Edie, eyes glassy. “It’s a beautiful name. She’s beautiful. Nathan, we’re surrounded by beautiful women.”

Nathan smiled. He was sitting beside Edie and he leaned forward, kissed her on the cheek. For the next hour, Gabe held sleeping Lydia. He paced the room, he sat on the pink-and-blue loveseat, he whispered in her ear as he looked out the window at the city below. It was Saturday, and traffic on the FDR was light. The sun shone off the East River and the Roosevelt Island tram carried people across in a glass capsule. When Lydia woke and started to cry, he handed her to Edie and asked, “Where’s your sister?”

TREVOR

Claudia Castro walked right into him as she came out of the elevator. Trevor was in sleep shorts and shower sandals. He’d run out of toothpaste and was headed to get some at the Rite-Aid on University.

“Whoa!” he said. She stumbled back, her sunglasses falling to the floor. Trevor took in her broken face. “Oh my gosh, are you okay?”

He bent down to pick up the glasses.

“I’m so sorry,” he continued when she didn’t answer. “We’ve got a first aid kit in our room.”

“I’m okay,” she said, taking the glasses without looking up. “Thanks.”

She walked past him. Limped, actually. Favoring one leg, bent slightly at the waist like she had a cramp. Trevor watched her go—he couldn’t help it. Perfect little half-moons peeked beneath the edge of her shorts. Her butt was small, but it moved just enough that he felt it. After the drugstore, he got in the shower and rubbed one out before church.

On his way back to the dorm, Trevor stopped at a café on MacDougal and ordered coffee and a blueberry muffin—everybody likes those, right? Unless she was gluten free. Or vegan. Trevor didn’t know many vegans in Canton, but a lot of the girls he met since arriving in New York had some dietary restriction or another. Either way, it was a gesture. Her roommate, Whitney, who he’d been hooking up with for a couple months, was big on gestures. Hopefully Claudia was, too.

“It’s Trevor,” he said after knocking at her door. He smiled into the peephole. “I live down the hall. We bumped into each other earlier.”

Claudia opened the door just a few inches. She was still wearing the sunglasses, but they didn’t cover all the wounds on her face.

“There’s cream and sugar in the bag,” said Trevor, raising the coffee.

She looked puzzled, like he’d changed the subject.

“I’m Trevor,” he heard himself say again.

Claudia accepted the coffee and the brown paper bag with the muffin inside.