“Well, yeah—”

“So I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten minutes.”

“Really, I don’t need—”

“It’s nicer to have company for this sort of thing,” Amara said. She stepped farther into the bathroom and began to shut the door, catching it at the last second before it closed. She leaned her head against the doorframe. “Besides, Gwen and Whitney have started planning Reagan’s birthday party, and I’m bored out of my mind.”

* * *

—

So twenty minutes later, Claire walked through the rows of toothpaste and shampoo to the counter in the back of a CVS as a Katy Perry song pulsed through the air, Amara pushing her stroller beside her. The guy behind the counter was even younger than Claire (when did she get older than people with real responsibilities?), and briefly, she imagined the version of her life where she’d majored in something besides music and then straightaway slid behind a counter and into a world of benefits and nine-to-five schedules and stifling yawns behind a hand when she thought no one was around, like the pharmacist was currently doing.

“Hey,” she said, stepping forward, as Amara lingered by the rack of trashy romantic paperbacks, smirking at a cover of a shirtless man next to a motorcycle.

The pharmacist startled and hastened to close his jaw. “Sorry,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I need Plan B,” she said, staring straight at him. The only other time she’d needed it, after an ill-advised night celebrating her eighteenth birthday with a boy who could have convinced her to do anything short of murder (he had promised her he was going to pull out, and then he hadn’t), the two of them had driven two towns over so they wouldn’t be recognized. While he waited in the car, she had stared down at the counter at the pharmacy while she’d asked, and then when she’d looked back up, she’d seen the accusation Slut all over the pharmacist’s face, clear as if he’d tattooed it on. At least this guy’s bovine face remained placid. And, Claire thought, Amara had been right. It was nicer not to have to do it alone.

“Sure,” he said, and pushed himself off his seat to poke around in the back. He moved sloth slow. The Katy Perry song ended, and a new song began piping through the speakers. Claire’s lungs constricted. As Marlena’s yowling vocals began, Claire counted down very slowly from ten in her head, an incantation to bring cow-faced sloth-speed man back. Instead, Amara wheeled her stroller over to her side as an elderly man thumped his way down the aisle and got in line behind them.

“This is the song Ellie and Meredith love so much,” Amara said, pointing into the air. “The ‘Idaho Eyes’ one.”

“Oh,” Claire said. “Oh, okay.” Amara gave her a weird look as the pharmacist returned, walking in time to the beat of the music.

He plunked the box of Plan B down on the counter. “Do you want a bag?”

“Yeah,” Claire said.

The corners of his thick mouth drooped down in disapproval. “Are you sure? We’re encouraging our customers to be environmentally conscious.”

“The ozone is disappearing!” the old man behind them piped up.

“Give her a fucking bag, please,” Amara said.

The pharmacist and the old man exchanged glances and shook their heads as the pharmacist slid the package into a plastic bag and tapped at his register. As he tapped, he bobbed his head to the song, humming along with the chorus. If she could get out of here before the bridge started, she’d be fine. “That’ll be forty-nine ninety-five,” he said.

“Do you know if insurance covers this at all?” Claire asked, trying not to look at Amara as the song’s second verse began. The members of the new-and-improved Vagabond were probably partying in thousand-dollar-a-night hotel suites nowadays, and she was haggling over the price of birth control.

“Hmm,” he said, screwing up his face in concentration. After a minute, he said, “I’m not sure. I could ask my boss.”

“Okay, yeah, that would be good,” Claire said.

“He’s not in today,” the pharmacist said. “And I’m not in tomorrow. Could you wait until the day after?”

“I— What? No,” she said. Well, too late—there was the bridge of the song, Marlena’s voice soaring on those familiar words. “That’s not how Plan B works.”

“Oh, really?” the pharmacist said.

“Good Lord,” Amara said. She pulled her credit card out of her wallet and plunked it down on the counter. “Here, just use this.”

* * *

—

Outside the pharmacy, they lingered in the afternoon’s gray light, Claire’s body turned in the direction of Central Park, Amara angled as if ready to head the other way.

“I’ll pay you back,” Claire said as Amara waved a hand dismissively. “Well, thanks. You really didn’t have to do . . . any of that.”

“I know,” said Amara. “But the other option was going back to my apartment and staring at Charlie for hours, so in a way, perhaps you did me a favor.”

“Then you’re welcome,” Claire said. A cold drizzle started up around them. Claire hugged her jacket closer. In the street, a taxi swerved in front of a car, setting off a symphony of honking. The pedestrians around them began to walk faster in anticipation of the drizzle becoming something worse while a man appeared from out of nowhere and set up on the corner, hawking ten-dollar umbrellas.

“You’d better go take that,” Amara said, nodding at the bag in Claire’s hand as she pulled a tarplike piece of clear plastic over the open part of Charlie’s stroller.

“Yeah,” Claire said. “Hey, thanks again. It was really nice—”

“Yes, yes, I know. I’m amazing,” Amara said. “I’ll see you next playgroup.”

Claire laughed. “Okay. Bye.” She bent down toward the clear plastic and waggled her fingers. “Bye, Charlie. Nice hanging out with you.”

In response, Charlie shook his head no, then scrunched up his face and let out a wail, twisting away. Amara shut her eyes for a moment and gave her head a small shake.

“Sorry,” she said. “He really is a good baby. He just doesn’t like to show it very much.”

“You know,” Claire said, “I admire him. He’s got spirit.”

A smile began to curve on Amara’s face, shyer than anything Claire had seen from her before. “You think so?” she asked.

Claire thought about the playgroups she’d been to, the looks some of the other mothers shot Amara when Charlie wouldn’t stop crying, the way he was clearly the least well-behaved of all the babies. People probably didn’t compliment Amara on her child very often. What a terrible feeling that must be. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “He doesn’t give a fuck. All the most interesting people are that way. He’s going to grow up to do great things. Or become a serial killer. One of the two.”