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I dropped Faye a quick line to let her know I’d be free if she felt like having another chat over orange juice. Then I jammed my phone as far into my pocket as I could and tried my best to focus on studying.

Naturally, my resolve to not look at my phone lasted all of thirty seconds. Luckily for me, Faye had already replie

d.

>FAYE: All right, great. Bring Gretchen to my office as usual and we’ll go from there.

The day dragged endlessly after that. Trying to focus on intricate, metaphor-laden verse was basically impossible when I had Faye to think about. After a while of not getting anywhere, I turned my attention to the undergrads’ quizzes. My eyes fuzzed over as soon as I tried to evaluate their theories about Shakespeare’s subconscious messages about capitalism.

“I give up,” I told Gretchen, who lay swaddled up at the back of the study carrel. “You want to go to story hour?”

The public library a few streets away held a story hour on Wednesdays at one pm. I hadn’t taken Gretchen yet because I usually managed to focus on the myriad other things I had to get done. Today, though? A children’s book sounded like the only thing I might actually be able to follow.

I took Gretchen’s hiccup as a yes, and we arrived at the other library a few minutes later. I balanced her and her bag as I searched for the right room. The librarian was already opening a picture book as we walked in.

“Just in time.” She pointed us to an empty seat. “We were about to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

“My favorite.” I smiled at her and settled in, Gretchen on my knee.

The room was full of other kids, from babies up to five or six. As I glanced around, I found myself examining their parents. Most were a bit older than me, but some seemed about my age. Faye would’ve fit in fine here if she ever had a day off work to bring Gretchen in.

My eyes nearly popped out when I saw there was even a lesbian couple in attendance. Two women in their early thirties had their hands linked under the table. Their little girl was looking at the front of the room, already rapt—but their two boys were bouncing on their chairs and poking each other.

The scene made me wish Faye could’ve been here with me and Gretchen. Then again, we wouldn’t be holding hands. Maybe once she was a little older… I couldn’t even let myself imagine it. Faye had been so evasive about whether she could imagine dating me in the future. And avoiding the question seemed pretty close to a no.

I was about to let out a sigh, but the librarian started reading, and that perked me up a bit. I propped Gretchen up so we could both look at her. I’d read this book to my cousins a hundred times when I was in my teens, and I found myself mouthing the words silently as the story went on.

Coming here was the right decision for today. Gretchen needed to go to places like this. Sometimes it seemed like Faye and I were so busy just keeping her fed and changed, we didn’t take the time to stimulate her intellectually.

Granted she was less than a month old, but you had to start exposing kids to stuff early. We should’ve been playing classical music for her. Apparently that could influence a fetus while it was still in the womb, and from what I knew about Gretchen’s mom, I highly doubted she’d done anything like that.

Irritated at the thought of Amanda, I hugged Gretchen closer to me. Maybe it was mean, but I hoped Gretchen would never have to go back to her. I didn’t want her to grow up without her mother, but how shitty did a mom have to be to leave her baby like that?

I had my own selfish reasons, too. I’d miss Gretchen a lot when I had to let go of her. But she wasn’t mine, even if I sometimes felt like I was playing the role of a parent.

The librarian closed the book and I stood up, refreshed and relaxed by the reading.

I’d have my own kids one day. If anything, this time with Gretchen was making it clear how much I wanted to have one—or several.

But all of that was in the future. Gretchen was like a practice run. A rough draft.

I couldn’t get too attached to her. And that should’ve been easy. She was only a couple weeks old. She didn’t have a personality yet. There was nothing there to grow fond of.

And yet as I cradled her to my heart, I knew somewhere deep inside me that we’d bonded.

And I felt just as surely that I’d break a little the day I had to give her up.

* * *

At five on the dot, I arrived at Faye’s office. The door was open, so I walked in—but I stopped short when I saw she already had someone inside.

The gray-haired woman was seated in the chair I usually took. I wheeled around, ready to kill some time and drop Gretchen off later.

Before I could go, Faye called out to me. “Jaz, there you are. Do you know Pauline? She’s the secretary of alumni affairs.”

“Oh… no. We’ve might’ve emailed before, if you’re the one who handles the grad rings.”

“I am,” she said with a smile.