In the background, I hear Justin. Babbling. He sounds like he’s giving a speech, holding forth on something. And suddenly I want to see him. To hold him up over my head, nuzzle his belly, make him laugh that fat, jolly baby laugh of his.

I want it more than I care about my pride.

“Okay,” I say.

“Please, Brody,” she says, at the same time, because she obviously wasn’t expecting me to say yes.

“I said okay. Are you two alone there right now? I’ll come get him.”

“Yeah. I’ll pack up an overnight bag for him. And the port-a-crib.”

“I don’t need the crib.”

“He needs a crib,” she says.

“I have a crib.”

It comes out like a confession. It is. I’ll admit it: I bought a crib for Justin to sleep in even though I’m not his dad, even though I’ll never be his dad.

I guess I knew that someday soon Zoë would ask this favor of me, and there was no fucking way I’d be able to refuse.

She comes to the door with Justin and his face lights up when he sees me, which fucking kills me. It’s been at least a few weeks since I laid eyes on him, and he still looks utterly delighted. He holds out his arms and I take him from Zoë. He reaches up and takes a handful of my nose, then face plants in my cheek.

“He’s started doing that. My mom says he’s giving kisses.”

My chest hurts so bad. I touch Justin’s cheek. It’s made of satin, the softest fucking thing I’ve ever touched. Also a little sticky. Zoë is a good mom, but wiping Justin’s face isn’t one of her strengths. “Can you bring me a warm, wet washcloth?” I ask her.

To my surprise, she does it without getting defensive. We argued a lot when Justin was a newborn, which maybe should have been my first sign that we weren’t all headed for domestic bliss. But we felt like a family and I wanted us to be a family so badly that I was willing to ignore all the warning signs.

I wonder if we would have lasted, if Justin had really been mine. We’d only been together a couple of months when he was conceived. We barely knew each other.

I just didn’t realize exactly how little we knew each other.

I clean Justin’s chubby face, while he twists and whines in protest, then hand the washcloth back to Zoë.

She looks as tired as she did in Oscar’s the other night. She’s pretty—dark hair, pale skin, and a body that’s snapped back well from pregnancy with Justin—but when I look at her now, I can’t remember what drew me to her. It’s like someone hollowed out that part of my brain.