“Sweet Jeff. These men don’t get it,” Leigh said. “But speaking of Jeff, how did it go last night?”
The previous day, Gwen had told Leigh of her plan to have sex with Jeff. She’d bought the lube and felt it was time to put it to use.
“It was good, actually,” Gwen said.
“Lube is magic, right?”
“Game changer,” Gwen said.
It was a surprise to both of them, Gwen and Jeff, how enjoyable it was. Gwen’s expectations had been low. She was checking something off a list. She didn’t expect to come, decided it would be a win if Jeff did. So when she came not once, but twice, she felt a kind of glory that had been missing from her life. She hadn’t missed sex, per se, but she had missed the basic pleasure of something going well.
There was this niggling doubt, though, this thought she’d been waiting to share with Leigh.
“I’m a little worried that it didn’t hurt because my hormones have changed from not breastfeeding,” Gwen said. “Like, my body thinks I’m done with that and is back to reproduction mode.”
Leigh appeared to consider it and then shook her head. “Nah,” she said. “It’s just the lube.”
Gwen felt like so many of their conversations were around her strife, her anxieties. She tried to balance it with more questions about Leigh’s life.
“How are you and Nathan?” Gwen asked.
Leigh shrugged. “Nothing new there. I feel like when you have a baby, a man becomes so ... obsolete. Like, they’re just in the way.”
Gwen laughed. “I think I’m too hard on Jeff. He can’t read my mind. I’m always waiting for him to catch up to what I know, but he just hasn’t done as much research as me.”
“Which is why youshouldbe hard on him,” Leigh said.
Gwen laughed again. “You sound like someone who doesn’t want to be married.”
She was joking but also not.
“You’re onto me,” Leigh said in a playful whisper.
“Oh, come on, you love Nathan,” Gwen said.
Though really, Gwen had no idea if Leigh loved Nathan. Gwen had no idea how Leigh defined love. It was so subjective, the ol’ trash-versus-treasure thing—one person’s good marriage was another person’s imprisonment.
“I care for him,” Leigh said. “I feel like we’re at the end of something, though. I just don’t know if it’s the end of a chapter or the end of our entire book.”
“I think most new parents must feel that way, right?”
“Hard to say. I would assume so, but then I see those couples on the street, taking turns pushing a stroller, kissing each other while waiting at stoplights.”
She pretended to gag, sticking out her tongue in mock disgust.
“That’s probably a performance,” Gwen said.
“For whom?”
“For themselves. For the general public. For their kid.”
“I don’t know if I’m up for performing all the time,” Leigh said.
“So, what? You want to leave Nathan?”
As frustrated as Gwen felt with Jeff at times, she couldn’t imagine leaving him. It wasn’t that he was super helpful with June, but he wasthere. He was an adult human being who was present—someone to tap in during dire moments. He reminded her of who she used to be—which was both aggravating and essential to her sanity.
“I don’t know,” Leigh said with a long sigh. “He gave me this delectable baby.”
