“Iris, will you please just come out with it?”

“Fine,” she said. “I heard about you and Sean. Having an affair behind Patrick’s back.”

My mouth fell open but it took me a moment to formulate words. “What?”

Iris folded her arms. “So it’s not true?”

“Of course it’s not true! Who told you that?”

“My sources are pretty credible.”

“Iris, are we in the playground? What are people saying about me and Sean?”

She pinched her lips together. “That your baby is his. That you two had an affair, and now you are pretending the baby is Patrick’s.”

I was trying to grasp the magnitude of what she’d said when George appeared in the doorway and cleared his throat.

“Um, excuse me, ladies. Brianna wants to start pushing.”

*   *   *

My sneakers squeaked against the linoleum floors. I hadn’t moved this fast since before I was pregnant. By the time I arrived at the elevator, I was jogging.

When the elevator door opened, three nurses I recognized were inside. A brief glance told me they had heard the rumor too. They were probably delighted. Patrick Johnson would be available again soon. One of them would probably love to be the one to tell him. Thank God he wasn’t rostered on until tonight.

I exited on the maternity floor. I scanned the halls and looked into each room I passed. Maybe Sean was on nights too? I was about to ask at the desk, when I heard his voice. I spun, and there he was, talking to a couple who carried their baby in a car seat, clearly about to be discharged.

“Better start saving for college,” he was saying. “And remember, we have a no-return policy on babies. Even with a receipt.”

The couple laughed and waved to Sean. As they walked away, Sean noticed me. “Hey, Nev. What’s up?”

“There is a rumor going around that we are having an affair.”

“Excuse me?”

“Iris told me this morning. Apparently, I’ve cheated on Patrick with you and the baby is yours.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Outwardly, Sean spoke in the arrogant, self-assured way that he had perfected, but I could tell he was nervous. “Who started the rumor?”

“Iris wouldn’t tell me. But I think a lot of people have heard it. I’ve been getting funny looks around the hospital for days.”

“Shit.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Have you been talking to the girls down at the birthing center?”

I didn’t dignify that with an answer, and Sean didn’t wait for one.

“Well, no one will believe it,” he said. “It’s gossip, pure and simple. We should just ignore it. Gossip dies down eventually. Especially when it’s not true.”

“It isn’t entirely false, Sean.”

“It is,” Sean snapped, then lowered his voice. “It is entirely false. We are not having an affair.”

I took his arm and pulled him into the stairwell. I didn’t need Sean adding to the problem by participating in what might be misconstrued as a lovers’ quarrel.

He threw off my arm as soon as we arrived in the stairwell and started pacing. “Sorry, I’m just pissed. People start these rumors for fun; they don’t realize they are messing with my life. Imagine if Laura heard this.”

“And what about Patrick?” Sean could be such a selfish jerk, thinking only about how things affected him. “This affects me too, you know.”

Sean wasn’t listening. “Laura had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, for fuck’s sake. I won’t lose her now because of one reckless night that only happened because you were blind drunk and I was out of my mind with worry!”

I shushed him, but the night was already flooding my mind. It was strangely vivid, given the fact that I was flat-out drunk. I could still see his face, staring trancelike at the wall in the staff room where, after a tip off from the nurses, I found him. He’d just been given the news about Laura’s tumor, and the prognosis wasn’t good. His stillness indicated he’d been that way for a while.

Laura was spending the night at the hospital before going in for surgery, so I called Patrick, and we took Sean to The Hip for a drink. We thought a drink might loosen him up, allow him to talk, but when we got there, he just stared into space for hours. There was a vacantness to him that I’d never seen—not when his father died, not when he’d delivered his first stillborn baby. Sean and I drank beer after beer, wine after wine. It was the only time in my life that I’d ever felt really good about getting hammered, like drinking my weight in alcohol was showing solidarity to Sean. Patrick, who was working nights, remained sober.

At closing time, Patrick went back to the hospital to start his night shift. I said I’d put Sean in a cab, but when we got onto the street, Sean suddenly started to talk. It spewed from him—how sick she was, how powerless he felt. After an hour of listening in the cold night air, I brought him back to my apartment. I made him up a bed on the couch and tucked him into it.

“You’re a good friend, Nev,” he slurred.

I nodded and continued tucking. Somehow wrapping him up tight felt like it would be a comfort—like swaddling to a newborn. Or maybe I was just too drunk to know what else to do.

“Could you stay with me awhile?” he asked. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’ll sleep here in the recliner,” I said, feeling glad I didn’t have to make the journey back to my room. My head felt so heavy, I didn’t think I’d make it there. “Just wake me if you want to talk.”

Sean opened the sheet that I’d just wrapped around him. “Could you sleep here?”

Sean looked pale, wide eyed, like a little boy. So at odds with the arrogant, self-assured man I knew. The couch looked more inviting than the recliner, so sleepily, I rolled in beside him so my back pressed against his front. I think I heard the words thank you before Sean’s warm, heavy arm lulled me to sleep.

When I woke, it was with strange urgency. It was still dark and I could hear whimpering. Awkwardly, I rolled over and frowned into the darkness.

“Sean, are you okay?”

“No,” he sobbed. “God, why is this happening?”

“I don’t know,” I said, patting his shoulder. I willed my brain to snap into gear so I could find some words of wisdom to help my friend. But my words sounded as foggy as I felt. A favorite saying of Grace’s popped into my mind: Words are a poor man’s touch. And touch, even in my state, I could probably manage.

It took some shuffling, but I managed to get my arms around Sean’s neck. He pressed his face into my chest. He cried a bit longer, and just as I was drifting into a light sleep, he spoke.

“Nev?”

“Mmm?” When I ducked my head to look at him he came at me like a hurricane: lips, hands, everything. At first I was stunned, and then … something else. As he rolled me onto my back, the pull of attraction was immediate, and fierce. Shapes floated before my eyes. And before I knew it, his body was heavy on mine.

In the back of my mind, I knew something wasn’t right. But with our arms and legs snaking through the darkness, I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was like admiring beautiful, ornate coral while the rain rapped against the surface of the water eight feet above—I suspected something was up there, but with everything else I had going on, I didn’t bother to look.

Sean was gone the next morning, and I was glad. Waking up alone gave credence to my theory that the whole thing was a dream.

I didn’t see Sean for two weeks after that. After Laura’s surgery, he took time off to care for her. Without him around, I was able to pretend it never happened. And when he returned, that was exactly how we acted. It wasn’t until he found out about my pregnancy that he even acknowledged the night had ever happened. But now, we had to acknowledge it.

“You won’t lose her, Sean. No one knows about that night, at least I haven’t told anyone. This rumor is probably based on someone seeing us together at the pub downstairs or whispering a joke in the hall or…” I trailed off.