I grip her hand tighter, needing the familiar, as we press past throngs of our fellow students returning to school, chattering about their summers away from New York, or their summers in New York, or the classes they took, and the jobs they tried on for size. A guy in a brown T-shirt has his arm draped over his dark-haired girlfriend and they turn the corner, debating whether to bestow six stars or seven to the movie they saw last night.

They’re not talking about the baby in her belly. The kid they’re going to have. The child they might lose.

My lungs are pinching, and it’s like my organs are being crammed into smaller-sized storage containers.

We reach the building where she has her creative writing class. “Go write something good about talking animals,” I say, and I flash a smile, trying to keep it light so she won’t know I’m withering inside.

“I always love writing about talking animals. Meet me after class?”

“Of course,” I say then I kiss her on the forehead, and she opens the door and disappears. When she’s gone, I slump against the wall and sink to the ground, my head resting on my knees.

My insides are threatening to pour out of me, to spill all sorts of fears, and that’s the last thing I want. I can’t handle that kind of mess right now. I clench my fists; I squeeze them tight. They’re a vise, holding in all the doubts that want to ensnare me. I picture the walls closing in, compacting this messy stew in my head.

Because I know how to shut down.

It is my greatest skill, it is the subject I’ve mastered, and the class I excel in. And, as I head off to my history seminar, it’s as if my veins have stopped pumping blood, and now there’s some kind of strange coolness flowing through them, as if the blood cells are made of blue liquid distance.

I don’t meet Harley after class. I don’t answer her calls. I send her a text telling her I forgot I’m meeting Jordan for lunch. I lie to her for the first time.

Then I do it again that night when she comes over after I return home from No Regrets. She tries to snuggle up close with me in bed, but I don’t want to be close to her, so I pretend I’m asleep. She wraps her arms tight around me, her warm little body against mine, and it’s almost enough for me to turn around and kiss her and tell her all the things I’m feeling, except I don’t want to feel anymore. Not a thing. Not for anyone.

Not at all.

Chapter Eight

Trey

There are five stages to grief: Denial. Bargaining. Depression. Anger. Acceptance.

I learned them all from Michele, my shrink. I went though some of them each time one of my three brothers died. I bypassed many of them.

But what the shrinks don’t tell you is that there is a sixth stage.

Faking it.

“Let’s break this down. Piece by piece, because that’s the only way to tackle something so big,” Michele says, folding her hands in her lap, taking my news so coolly, so calmly that I’d bet the house on her being on Xanax. How the hell else can you explain the fact that she’s not pulling out her hair, or sitting there with her jaw hanging down on the floor? She’s acting like this is all too normal. Have an emotion. Have a reaction. Fucking feel this with me.

Or don’t. Whatever. I don’t care. I can’t care. I don’t want to care.

“I need you to be straight with me right now, Trey.”

“Sure,” I say, settling into her couch. Her office, with its abstract paintings of red squares, yellow brushstrokes and blue lines, is my bomb shelter, safe from shrapnel. No bad news can hit me here. No one can touch me.

“I don’t want anything but the truth. Promise?”

“Got it,” I say, nodding.

“What is your biggest fear? Being a father? Committing to Harley? Or are you—”

I cut her off. “What? Committing to Harley? I’m committed. I’m with her. There’s no one else.”

She shakes her head, crosses her legs. “That’s not what I’m saying. But having a family and being parents is a huge step and it tethers you to someone for life. You’ve only just started having a relationship with her, it’s the first one you’ve ever had, and now this. You’re not even living together yet,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “Did you ask her like you’d planned to?”

The window of her office is suddenly fascinating. The way the afternoon light slants through it. How the glass is spotless. “Do you clean that window every day?”

“No. The cleaning crew does.”

“Damn, they do a good job. Don’t you think?” I ask, turning back to her.

She gives me that look. The one that says she knows I’m stalling. “So, what did she say when you asked her?”

“I didn’t ask. I meant to. But it didn’t seem like the right time.”

She nods. “I can imagine. But then, maybe it would have been the best time. Are you afraid to ask her to move in now? Afraid to be close?”

I sneer. “No. Not afraid of that whatsoever. We’re already close. It’s just . . .” I say, but my voice trails off.

“Just what, Trey?”

“I just need space to process this, okay? It’s kind of like a big fucking deal.”

“Right,” she says firmly. “It. Is. Like, the biggest deal of your life. That’s what having a kid is. So are you pulling away from her?”

“No! I’d never do that to her.”

“Then I need to ask you the next question. We need to talk about the elephant in the room.”

My chest rises and falls. I know what’s coming. I don’t want to know what’s coming. I hold up a hand, but she asks anyway.

“Are you thinking the baby won’t make it?”

Armor. I put on my armor.

I scoff, like that’s a ludicrous suggestion. “That’s crazy. There’s no way that would happen. I mean, how could it? We’ve done our time, I’ve fucking paid for it. That doesn’t happen. Does it?”

Michele sighs deeply, and fixes me a look I’ve seen before. One I know well. Kindness, laced with sympathy. She feels sorry for me already?

“Trey,” she says in a soft, gentle voice, “it’s unlikely it would happen again, but there are never any guarantees of that sort. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that prior loss is a hedge. That it preempts the possibility of any future problems. Because that’s not true. Anything can happen at any time, though I hope your baby will be fine.”

I draw a sharp breath, and push my palms hard against the couch. “It won’t happen. I won’t let it, Michele. Everything will work out fine.” The more I repeat it, the more it becomes true. “There’s no way that could happen. The universe won’t let it. Everything will be picture perfect.”

I try to impress this upon Michele for the rest of the session, and by the time I leave, I nearly believe it. I press hard on the down button in the elevator, then rest my forehead against the panel and close my eyes. It will all be fine. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Or in my case, four times.

See? That’s the proof there. There’s no way on earth it could happen again.

I have immunity now. Absolute and utter immunity from loss.

The cool of the panel feels good against my skin, cocooning me in a protective bubble. Because I am safe. Even when I leave Michele’s building and the late August heat smacks my face, it doesn’t faze me because: Everything. Is. Fine. Here.

A cabbie slams on his horn, the crude sound blasting into my ears, but it doesn’t bug me. Because I know how to protect myself.

I have a shield from pain.

I turn the corner, and a burly guy smoking a cigarette crashes into me, nearly knocking me against a building, but I sidestep him nimbly. See? Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can touch me.

I make my way to Third Avenue and turn left, heading north, heading somewhere, passing familiar shops. Florists peddling bouquets that rich husbands bring their beautiful wives to say they’re sorry for working late, but then they do it again the next night, then the next, the lure of the deal, the boardroom, the negotiation more potent than her. Then they buy diamonds from the jewelry shop on the corner here. Or send them to this spa for the day, where it’s tranquil and calm, as the women lie with cucumbers on their eyes, drifting off to the memories of pleasure.

Then I walk past doormen I have seen before, town cars pulling up, ladies spilling out. And then, finally, the maroon-uniformed man greets me with a nod, and holds open the door, since he’s known me for years.

And I’m honestly not sure how I got here, but this is where I am: my medicine cabinet, where I keep my pills. This is where my robot feet have taken me, where my cool, perfectly modulated heart is beating. Across the rose marble lobby, into the elevator. Doors close, I press the button, fifteen floors later, a whoosh, and here I am. The plush brown carpeting, the cool quiet of the hallway, the doors ready to reveal naked bodies. What’s behind door number one? How about door number two?

Or maybe, just maybe, 15D?

That one. Yeah. The fucking painkiller that’s going to make everything fine, sliding down my throat like a couple of Vicodin. There’s only one thing that can that can erase uncertainty, that can take away pain, and it’s calling to me in its siren song that blots out the sounds and noises of old New York.

I step out of the elevator onto Sloan’s floor.

Chapter Nine

Harley

The key slides into the lock. Of course the key slides into the lock. The key is made for this fucking lock.

But my heart is sputtering, and I can hear it loud in my ears. I still feel like I’m slipping a credit card into a door, all clandestine and furtive, because I might have a key, but this is not my home anymore.