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“What else did he tell you?”

“That he loves playing baseball.” Truthfully, the kid reminded me of myself at his age, excited to play, with his whole future ahead of him. But Noah has a mother who cares, unlike mine, who spent more time shopping and going to Botox parties than at the field. I rarely speak to her because after she divorced my father, she moved to Europe and is on her third husband.

It was my father who drove my brother and me to baseball practices. Who stood at the fence, yelling directions. Who pitted us against each other, like it was a survival of the fittest game, instead of something we should’ve loved playing purely because it was fun.

I clear my throat, watching Millie for a moment while she coasts her gaze around the apartment once again, studying her environment. I wonder what she sees. If she thinks I’m pathetic, a thirty-year-old man with nothing to show for his life. If she’s impressed by what I do have, a major league baseball career, and a million-dollar home.

If she cares about any of it.

I doubt it.

When she finally meets my gaze, she almost immediately darts her eyes away, as if embarrassed I caught her in the middle of a dissection.

Although, I’m the one in the middle of trying to burrow into the heart of her. “He also said he doesn’t have a dad.”

She inhales audibly before pivoting around to plop down on the one chair in the living room. She rocks side to side as if getting comfortable but doesn’t stop, a gentle swaying. I lower down to sit on the coffee table, because it’s the only other place for me to go. “You don’t have to tell me anything. It has nothing to do with me, so⁠—”

“It’s okay.” She leans forward. “It’s not like I’m ashamed of it. More like…”

She doesn’t continue for a long time, and I scoot to the edge of the table, a little afraid it might snap under my weight, but I need to be closer to her. She rubs her knuckle so much, I’m tempted to take her hands in mine. Instead, I fold my fingers together, letting them hang between my legs, my elbows on my knees. “More like what?”

“I’m bad luck.”

I frown at the preposterous notion. “You are not bad luck.”

“I am. I’m clumsy. I’m always messing up, and I…spread bad luck around.”

“I really doubt that.”

She turns her palms up, lifting her shoulder, a silent You’ll see.

But Millie isn’t bad luck. She’s smart, funny, and quirky enough to make me obsessed. “So what happened with Noah’s dad?”

She has her hair down today, loose waves that fall around her shoulders, and she plays with a lock of it, winding and unwinding it around her fingers. “Nothing. I don’t know him. Well, I mean, obviously, I knew him, but I was eighteen. I went down the shore with some friends for senior week.”

“What’s senior week?”

“You don’t do that?” At the shake of my head, she explains, “High school graduates go to the beach for a week to celebrate. Rent a house with friends. Usually around here, they go to Wildwood or Ocean City.”

“To get drunk and do stupid shit?” I guess, and she nods.

“I didn’t really get drunk or do anything stupid, except decide to have sex for the first time with this boy I met. He was cute and sweet, named Robbie. My friends and I met him and his friends our first day there, and we pretty much spent all week together. The last night, Robbie and I…”

I rub the heels of my palms against my eyes, imagining a younger Millie, probably sunburned and laughing in the water with this Robbie guy.

She goes on. “We used a condom, and it was fine. I went to Cornell, as planned, intent on becoming a veterinarian, but a couple weeks in, I started feeling sick. I didn’t think anything was wrong until I passed out, and my roommate took me to the ER. That’s when I found out I was pregnant.”

I don’t know what exactly the feeling in my gut is, but my brain spins in a circle, a merry-go-round of directions to Help her. Protect her. Keep her.

“You never told him?” I ask, and she shakes her head.

“I had no way of finding him. I told you, I’m bad luck. It was supposed to be a stupid thing. A rite of passage. A bit of bumbling fun with a boy who was nice to me.”

I curl my fingers into fists at “bumbling fun,” because she should’ve had so much more for her first time. Care and patience. Not some idiot who never even bothered to ask for her phone number.

“My friends tried to find him on social media, but I didn’t even know what school he went to. Robbie from Jersey.” She exhales softly. Maybe a little sadly. “So what else was I supposed to do? I dropped out of college and raised Noah on my own with the help of my mother.”

“You’re amazing,” I say without thinking, and she snorts a laugh.