While Parker and I were working out the details of this new arrangement—all while cohabiting at the octagon-shaped guest house on the Thaysdens’ property—my childhood friends still thought I was going to change my mind. They figured that before Parker and I could get our IVF scheduled and legal paperwork signed I would go starry-eyed for some man. They kept shoving eligible bachelors in my face, and they were all fine. A couple were actually really great. But what they didn’t understand was that it wasn’t the men I didn’t like.

All marriage was, it seemed to me, was one big competition. Who had a nicer car, who had a better house, who was more in love, who had better jobs, made more money, went on better vacations. I didn’t think social media had helped things much, but I thought the people who blamed it all on Instagram were wrong. The world had been this way for as long as I had been in it.

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t get caught up in the whirlwind when Thad and I got married. But I did. I couldn’t help it. I honestly did love him, so much. So why I felt the need to have everyone see and comment on that, I’m not sure. How I felt in my heart should have been enough for me. But when I started planning dinner dates based on which restaurants were the coolest and vacations based on what other people would think, not what I really wanted to do, I realized that I had become a person I never wanted to be. And then he left me for Chase, and, well, if you want to talk about losing the game, that was the way to do it. I had lost, once and for all.

The only way to truly stay out of the game, I thought, was to remove myself from it altogether. Now, when my friends talked about their awesome lives, I was sort of immune to it, like a spinster aunt. No one was in competition with me. At least, that’s how it felt, already. I could ooh and aah over their baby pictures and go to their showers and listen attentively about their latest trips.

I was competitive by nature. In sports, in life. And now I was out of the game, I thought again, as Parker helped me up the steps and into my bed at the Thaysdens’ little house. The octagon house was nothing if not charming. With the tall, angular ceilings and leaf fans, I felt like I was somewhere in the Bahamas, not Cape Carolina. But when I looked out my window, I remembered because I could see the tree. And the tree was decidedly Cape Carolina. Live oaks grew all around our houses, with gnarled branches that extended up and out and sideways. They were amazing to climb. When I was in my prime tree-climbing years at seven, Parker was only four, but around our neighborhood, four was definitely old enough to be climbing trees. Only, I don’t know why or how, but Parker just couldn’t get the hang of it. He could take on bigger kids at basketball, hang in backyard baseball, and run with a wild abandon, but the kid couldn’t climb trees. His shoes would slip if he had them on, but he’d get splinters if he was barefoot. And even when I hoisted him up, he’d only make it to the lowest branch. Then I’d scurry up to the top, and he’d look up at me and cry and cry.