The Break(13)

“Should I take her?” Gabe asks me. I’m trying to bend toward the faucet with Lila still in the carrier. I want to say, She’ll just start screaming, but instead I say, “I need to nurse her on the other side.”



“Rowan,” Gabe says, gesturing toward my midsection. I look down. I must have pressed my belly against the sink and not realized how wet my clothes had gotten. The skin around my cesarean scar is still so numb I can’t even feel it.

“I’ll change later,” I murmur.

Gabe’s sweats hang low enough that I can see a thin strip of his boxer briefs. We stare at each other, and then the doorbell buzzes and I flinch. “Who’s that?”

“I called Harrison,” Gabe says.

“What? Why?” I ask.

“Because I was worried, Rowan,” Gabe snaps, and for the first time I feel bad. And not for the first time I worry that Gabe doesn’t have enough close male friends. Why does he run to his agent at the first sign of trouble? There are a few guys Gabe goes out for drinks with, but they’re industry people to whom he’d never air his dirty laundry. Harrison knows all kinds of things about us, from me losing my mind on June to the time Gabe and I had a rough patch financially when a film Gabe produced tanked and he couldn’t recoup the money. Gabe never breathed a word of that to any of our couple friends, and he swore me to secrecy. And then he decided he’d only ever write and direct, so that our money was never on the line again. Which was fine by me; I just never understood the deep shame he felt about it, like he’d committed a crime.

I follow Gabe to the door and he opens it, and I see Harrison in the same sharp brown coat and gloves I just spied him in outside June’s apartment. I imagine Sean up in that apartment, seeing Harrison’s face on the intercom, maybe getting some kind of smug satisfaction when he didn’t let Harrison inside. Sean, keeper of the gate, June’s dissatisfied best friend.

“Harrison,” I say. His wavy blond hair is mussed from his wool cap. I smile, because deep down I like Harrison. There was an inconsequential flicker of time when I was drawn to him, the first night Gabe, Harrison, and I met, when I stood beside Harrison and stared into his dark blue eyes and imagined putting a hand against his blond stubble. But then Gabe came to stand beside us, and when I met Gabe, that was that; I was done. Gabe, the man around whom gravity doesn’t pull in the same way. It folds in on itself, intensifying until you’re in his orbit and it’s the only place you’ve ever wanted to be.

“You’re home,” Harrison says kindly. He looks at Gabe and says, “Your lost love is found.” Then he turns back to me. “And how beautiful is this baby? Even more beautiful than when I saw her in the hospital. Though I guess in the hospital she was covered with all that slime.”

I appreciate him trying to make a joke instead of looking at me like I’ve done something wrong. “That slime,” I say, smirking, “is filled with healthy bacteria.” We grin at each other while Gabe stands there looking annoyed.

“I have to feed her on the other side,” I say, needing to get out of the foyer, to disentangle myself from our threesome. But then Harrison’s face changes, and he raises his eyebrows like he always does when he’s about to ask me or Gabe something verging on serious.

“Have you seen June?”

The question hangs in the air like something sour. “Or talked to her?” Harrison adds, and then runs a hand over his boyish blond curls. Beads of sweat glimmer near his hairline.

“I haven’t,” I say. I meet Gabe’s dark eyes and see them staring back at me. And then I decide to just say it. “I haven’t seen or talked to her since that night I had my break.”

Gabe’s eyes widen. Maybe because I haven’t called it that before. Was that what it was? A mental break? Why hasn’t anyone been able to put a name on it? My OB ran through a checklist with me for postpartum depression, and it didn’t sound like I had that, and Sylvie said she was sure that I had postpartum anxiety and PTSD from the birth, and that we didn’t need to get caught up on labeling it, we just had to treat it.



“And I would love to talk to June,” I say, “but Gabe’s not really letting me out of the house.”

Harrison can take complicated stuff; it’s how he’s built. “I see,” he says calmly, like a husband holding his wife and baby hostage is normal. And then he shrugs a little. “I can’t seem to get ahold of her,” he says. “I saw her that night, after everything happened here. She was obviously upset, and she stayed the night.” He says this without judgment, like he’s somehow able to be on both my and June’s sides, and I believe him. It’s what makes him so good at his job. “But this morning she ran out of work distraught, and she’s been out of touch since then, which is really unlike her because she’s Gen Z.”

He tries to smile like it’s all funny. But it’s obviously not. His voice drops a notch when he says, “I’m a little worried.”

I open my mouth to say something, but all at once I have this crushing image of June lying on her back in the street outside her apartment. I see it like a mirage: those same teenagers I saw shooting hoops, but this time passing the ball over June’s body, the traffic light changing. June lying there like a corpse, almost like she’s too drunk to move. In my mind I look closer—Maybe she is a corpse? Maybe she’s dead? I shudder but Gabe and Harrison don’t seem to notice anything. “I-I’m sorry,” I finally stammer, trying to squeeze the image from my mind. What is wrong with me? “I really need to go feed Lila.”