“Is it? Why?”

The light changes. We begin to enter the crosswalk as an older woman walks in tandem with us, peeking in the stroller.

She beams.

“Congratulations, you two! How old is your baby?”

I damn near freeze in the middle of the crosswalk.

“She’s almost two weeks old,” Chloe answers, smooth as silk. Looking right at me, she smiles, raising one shoulder just enough to say, Go with it.

My throat tightens. My pulse races. I put one foot in front of the other and my hand that rests on Chloe’s shoulder feels like it’s a thousand pounds.

“Beautiful! Is she your first?”

Chloe’s eyes widen. The ruse has gone too far.

“No,” I say truthfully. “She’s not.” I don’t mention that she’s not mine at all.

“Enjoy! They grow up so fast!” The woman pivots to make a left turn. “Mine are in college now. I’d trade the freedom for a day of their babyhood in a heartbeat.”

I can’t feel my feet. I can’t hear traffic. A roar of blood pounds my ears. I’m walking only because of primal programming that warns my rat brain to get out of the way of the big metal predators in the road.

Chloe laughs softly, the sound full of questions.

“That was cute.”

That was something.

Just as we reach the curb, Holly starts to scream, a high-pitched, frantic newborn cry that requires an instantaneous response. Chloe’s arms are under her in seconds, lifting the baby up, the red-faced scream continuing, unabated.

It’s like having fingernails raked down an exposed nerve.

The sound triggers a kind of parenting PTSD in me, taking me back twenty years. My body becomes my twenty-two-year-old self, my eyes overly alert and senses on edge.

“What’s wrong, honeybee?” Chloe coos. “It’s okay.” She makes some shhh shhh shhh sounds to soothe the baby while I stand there, dumbly, blinking in the sunlight.

“Is Elo – um, Holly okay?” Damn. Almost called her by my daughter’s name.

“I don’t know! She doesn’t scream like this.”

And then Holly lets out a frat-boy belch that my brother would approve of.

Spit up pours out of her like a volcano.

Chloe goes into awkward new-parent mode, trying to avoid being a target, while comforting one pissed-off infant.

Breaking out of my trance, I hand her the first thing I find in the carriage bottom.

“Here.”

She begins mopping up Holly, then stops. “Joe?”

Shit. She’s forgotten my name.

“No. Nick.”

Her laugh comes out as a gaspy-wheezy sound, like she’s having an asthma attack. “No, I mean – how did Joe’s old Coldplay t-shirt get into my daughter’s stroller? I thought I got rid of this.” She wrinkles her nose. “It smells like his old cologne.”

I look in the carriage bottom. The top of the shoebox where I stored the auction items bounced off, the contents of the box spilling out. I happened to grab what turns out to be her ex-lover’s t-shirt.

“Um.” My brilliant response rings through the air.

Chloe’s eyebrows go up.

“Nick?”

“If you’re going to mop up baby puke, a Coldplay t-shirt is a great candidate.”

She doesn’t laugh. Damn.

This is going downhill fast. A glimmer of light on water catches my eye.

“Let’s walk to the bridge,” I say, my hand on her back as she puts Holly down. The baby’s front is wet, but she settles in quietly, bubble thoroughly evacuated.

The look on Chloe’s face makes it clear a long explanation is in order.

One more block and we’re at the Charles River, coxswains calling out orders and encouragement to their crew teams, kayakers frolicking in the water. The early fall weather draws people out of their tiny boxes in the city, giving Cambridge an air of vitality. Students fill the streets, going for runs, wearing backpacks, and cluttering the side roads.

“How, exactly, did you come to possess my ex’s t-shirt?”

“It’s a long story.”

She points to the now-sleeping Holly, one corner of her mouth twisting up with mirth. “I’ve got about twenty minutes.”

“Not sure that’s long enough.”

“That’s what she said.” Chloe speaks through the side of her mouth, tone husky and with great affect. But she’s tightly-wound and twitchy.

I groan.

“Spill.”

Bending down, I re-collect Joe’s auction items, placing them carefully in the box, the strap-on centered on top of the rest of the items. I stand up holding a closed parcel.

“Here.” I thrust it at her.

She opens it, nearly choking as she sees what’s on top.

Then she looks at me and says dryly, “Most guys wait until the third date to suggest the strap-on.”

My butthole clenches involuntarily.

“Oh, god,” she groans. “This is, um… I know this particular strap-on.”

“Intimately, I’d imagine.”

She looks up sharply, real anger in her face, and it’s clear I’ve crossed a line.

Damn, she’s hot when she’s pissed.

“This is Joe’s stuff! These are all the items he used to leave at my place while we… when we were...” A speculative horror fills her face. “Why are you gifting me a sex toy Joe bought after seeing Deadpool?” She fishes around the box, horror filling her features. “And no, I did not use it on him! He begged me, but...”

I start to laugh.

“—we never even got to March for International Women’s Day!”

I stop laughing.

Chloe grips the stroller and slowly begins to back away from me, a protective air around her. “What is this, Nick? Did you do something to Joe?”

“Do something?”

“You had him in a headlock that day at the office. Maybe you’ve… hurt him?”

“Hurt him? Hurt him how?”

“How else would you have these very personal items of his?”

“I bought them. Paid $1,077.51 in an auction.”

“Auction? You spent what? You’re not making any sense.”

“Ever heard of a site called Never Liked It Anyway?”

Her hand flies to her mouth. The strap-on drops out of her other hand and plunks softly on the bonnet of Holly’s carriage, rolling slightly to settle into a groove. It looks like a space-age dog toy.