“Thanks ever so much,” Amara said, rolling her eyes. “That last part truly is a comfort.”

The rain started coming down more heavily, anointing them, getting into Claire’s eyes so that she had to blink the drops away. “Oh, boy, this is going to be a fun trip home. Bye for real now,” Claire said, and turned to go.

“Claire,” Amara said. Claire turned back. “Do . . . do you have someone to make you tea and all that after you’ve taken the pill?”

“Um,” Claire said.

“Because you could come back to mine. I’m close, and my husband won’t be home for a while.” Amara paused, pursing her lips. “God. Despite how it sounds, I swear I’m not trying to seduce you.”

* * *

—

Fifteen minutes later, Claire lay on Amara’s brown leather couch as levonorgestrel invaded her ovaries, decimating any unwanted invaders. Pow! Pow! Not fertilizing any eggs today, you devils!

She stretched out, her body already heavy and unsettled, and looked at her surroundings. Amara’s apartment was small. Well, no, it could’ve eaten Claire’s apartment for breakfast and still been hungry, but Claire’s trips to Whitney’s and Gwen’s had skewed her expectations. Their apartments (or brownstones) held a sense of mystery—they could very well contain secret passageways or maid’s quarters or a staircase to the roof. The entirety of Amara’s apartment announced itself immediately. The three doors leading off the living room must have been a bathroom and two bedrooms. The kitchen was only cordoned off by a half wall, so the noises floated straight into the living room—Amara bustling around, the teakettle emitting its high-pitched whistle. And while Whitney’s and Gwen’s homes were both decorated in one unified aesthetic (sleek for Whitney, classic for Gwen), Amara’s home was more the product of a relatively well-off, busy couple who had bought whatever nice furniture caught their fancy at the time and plunked it down wherever it fit.

Well, and then there were a couple of luxury items—a small crystal bowl on a shelf that must have cost a fortune and didn’t even have anything in it, a cashmere blanket on the couch with a tag from Saks Fifth Avenue that was the softest thing Claire had ever touched. Had Amara stolen those too, just gone into Saks and slipped them into her purse with that same frenzied desperation that Claire had seen on her face that day in Whitney’s office? Claire shook her head, not wanting to think about that right now.

On the floor, Charlie crawled around, grabbing at anything that wasn’t nailed down or baby-proofed—a well-worn, dog-eared baby book on the low coffee table (The Foolproof Guide to a Happy, Healthy Baby), a set of keys. He settled on Amara’s large purse and stuck one of its handles into his mouth, gnawing on it like it was an ear of corn.

“All right, as promised, one cup of tea,” Amara said, coming out of the kitchen and setting a steaming mug down on the coffee table. Claire sat up and wrapped her hand around it gratefully.

Tired of his gnawing, Charlie reached into Amara’s purse and began scooping its contents onto the ground. The first to hit the floor was a pretty little bag, like the ones Whitney had given out the other week. “Oh, yeah, what’s this whole goody bag thing about?” Claire asked as Charlie held the bag upside down and shook everything inside it out.

Amara picked up Charlie, stopping his destruction, and he kicked and wriggled in her arms as Claire plucked the goody bag from the floor, running her fingers over its pretty pattern of embossed golden leaves. “Oh, you know,” Amara said as she carried Charlie to one of those bouncy freestanding baby seats, like an inner tube with no water. “Silly wellness things that people send Whitney because of her Instagram. She goes all out and makes us these little party favor bags of them. I think she has too much time on her hands.” She slid Charlie in, and he began to jump, pounding at the garish neon piano key buttons in front of him until they released their tinny music. Amara returned to the floor in front of the couch, where Charlie had dumped everything, sat down, and began to gather it all back up with a sigh. “Let’s see,” she said, holding up a bar of soap in the air like a presenter on the Home Shopping Network. “Today, we’ve got special, toxin-free soap to make sure your baby’s skin is soft as margarine.” She picked up a small suede box, delicate and expensive-looking enough to house an engagement ring inside, with a tag reading TrueMommy in a clean Avenir font. “Organic mommy vitamins to make your hair shiny and give you the energy to go on. And finally,” she said, waving a postcard in the air, “a coupon for fifteen percent off a Mommy-and-me yoga class that I will never go to.”

“Man,” Claire said, holding out her hand to take the goodies and put them back into the bag. “Whitney gets a lot of free shit. I should start a fancy Instagram.”

“Right? The whole thing is kind of insane, but people love her, apparently. The Internet goes wild for beautiful young moms who make all the regular moms feel hopeful. Whitney is an achievable unicorn to them, like if they just drink enough kale smoothies and meditate for ten minutes a day, they’ll wake up in her perfect life,” Amara said, handing over the objects and then tensing up as though she was worried Claire was going to break the special soap she was stuffing back into the bag.

“I’ll have to get her autograph at the next playgroup,” Claire said, squinting at the fancy TrueMommy description: A comprehensive supplement & metabolic optimizer for new moms. “Well, that’s a complicated way to say ‘these pills will make you skinny.’”

“All right, they do a little bit more than that. Or at least they’d better. I’m paying enough for them.”

“What?” Claire laughed. “Do they increase your sex drive and boost your IQ by fifty points too?” What a load of BS. Sure, she’d like to believe that eating activated charcoal could turn her into Heidi Klum, but at the end of the day, she was always going to be herself, unfortunately. She’d bet her left boob that TrueMommy was up-charging these moms like crazy, that these vitamins contained two dollars’ worth of herbs but retailed for two hundred dollars.

Amara opened her mouth as if to argue, an unsettled look on her face. Then she bit her lip and got to her feet. “Well, to each their own. Shall I put on some music?”

Claire nodded, so Amara walked over to her phone and began scrolling through it. The bergamot scent of Claire’s tea wafted up toward her, and she blew on the liquid, then took a small sip, lying back as the warmth coursed through her body and settled in her stomach. She closed her eyes. Then those familiar, hateful chords began pulsing out of a speaker. Claire startled and sat up. Amara leaned against the wall, watching her with catlike stillness.

“Um,” Claire said. “Hmm, maybe we could listen to some jazz instead. Better for a rainy day.”

“Don’t you want to further your pop-culture awareness?” Amara asked, raising an eyebrow. “Meredith and Ellie would probably cream their pants if you played this in playgroup.”