“Why don’t you and Hope go?” he said without opening his eyes. “You guys will have a better time without me slowing you down.”
“We’d never have a better time without you,” she said, slipping her arm around him. His muscles tensed under her touch.
“I need a little break.”
She poked him playfully. Sometimes she felt like a parody of herself. “Come on, lazy bones.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” he snapped, “but people who work all week like to relax on the weekends.”
So she bundled Hope into her winter coat, and they set off without Grant.
Whitney hadn’t been one of those women who dreaded turning thirty, who viewed it as some sort of terrifying deadline. Anyway, she’d gotten her life together in plenty of time, meeting Grant at twenty-four, giving birth to Hope at twenty-nine. But as she pushed her daughter down the avenue, toward the farmers market, an unsettling ache came over her. In her quest to build the perfect family, had she rushed things, using up all of her allotted excitement and adventure too quickly, leaving the rest of her life to rehashing the same arguments over and over again? No. She was being silly. Motherhood was a new kind of adventure, and she and Grant had plenty of excitement left to enjoy. They were just in a bit of a rut right now because they were so tired all the time. But that would pass.
She wandered from booth to booth, pushing Hope’s stroller past the stand selling homemade bread and stopping to look at the farm-fresh eggs. She glanced over at a baby babbling nearby, smiling at her distractedly before recognizing her as Reagan.
“Oh, hey, you!” Whitney said, leaning down and holding out her hand for Reagan to grab onto. She looked up, expecting to see Gwen at the helm of Reagan’s stroller, but an unfamiliar man stood there instead.
“Hello,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“Hi,” she said, drawing back from Reagan. “Sorry. I promise I’m not one of those creepy women who touches random babies without asking!”
“It happens all the time,” he said. “Having such a beautiful baby—it’s a blessing and a curse.”
Whitney laughed. “I’m Whitney, from Gwen’s playgroup.”
“Oh, of course, the famous Whitney!” he said, then knelt down by her stroller, smiling. “And this must be Hope.” When he straightened back up, he stuck out his hand for a shake. “I’m Christopher.” As they shook, Whitney took him in. Gwen’s husband had a bump in his nose, like he’d broken it and decided not to fix it, hair that curled down toward his chin, and stubble on his face. He looked around the market in an engaged and open way, different from the other bored, clean-cut men accompanying their wives. When he’d smiled down at his daughter, it had been with a pure, beautiful adoration.
Whitney blinked. “Is Gwen around?”
“No. On Saturdays, she takes Rosie to her dance class, and I bring Reagan here.” Good for them, Whitney thought, dividing up parenting duties like that. She’d like to discuss something similar with Grant, when they had another child. “What about your husband?” Christopher asked, as if he’d read her mind. “Is he here? The playgroup spouses need to do some bonding too!”
“Oh, he’s at home, recuperating from last night,” she said, and then added, offhand, “We went out to celebrate my birthday.”
“Hey,” Christopher said, his face breaking into a crinkly smile. “Happy birthday!”
“Thanks,” she said. “A big one. Thirty!”
“Whoa,” he said. “A big one, indeed!” He glanced around, his eyes landing on a nearby sign advertising hot apple cider. “Here, let me buy you a cup of birthday cider.”
“Oh, please, you don’t have to.”
“Reagan,” he said, bending down toward his baby in her stroller, “what do you think about us buying our nice friend some cider?” Reagan gurgled, and Christopher nodded very seriously at her before turning back to Whitney, saying in a confidential sort of tone, “Well, the boss has spoken, and she says I do have to. I’m afraid if you don’t accept, she’ll think you’re very rude.”
Whitney laughed, and Christopher ordered them each a steaming cup. They sat on a nearby bench to drink, parking their strollers beside them. “How are you feeling about the big three-oh?” Christopher asked.
“Oh, it’s really just another birthday,” she said.
“Yes and no,” he said, looking at her like he cared what she thought.
“Well,” she said, and hesitated. “It does make you do a certain accounting of the choices you’ve made throughout your twenties.”
“It definitely does,” he said. “And how do yours add up?”
“Oh, they add up wonderfully. But . . . well, where I grew up, twenty-nine was late to have a baby, and that’s not so much the case in New York.”
“Mm,” Christopher said, blowing on his cider, steam rising into the air around him. “In terms of New York parenting, you’re practically a baby yourself.”
“Exactly. I’m the youngest one in the playgroup, and sometimes when I listen to the other women talk about the adventures they had—Ellie went off for a year and taught English in South Korea; Amara partied with all kinds of celebrities—I think maybe I should’ve taken some more time to wander.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s silly.”
“I don’t think it’s silly,” Christopher said, pulling out a bag of cut-up strawberries and handing one to Reagan. “Although it was the opposite for me. I turned thirty, looked around at all the adventuring I’d done, and realized I hadn’t built anything solid. But hey, then two weeks later, I met Gwen.”
“So two weeks from now, I’ll probably pick up and move to Japan,” Whitney said.
“Exactly.” He laughed a nice, easy laugh that lifted the cloud she’d been walking around under all morning. “Just wait till you see forty looming on the horizon. It gets even weirder.”
They kept chatting as they drank their ciders, the other market-goers whirling around them, until Whitney’s phone dinged with a message from Grant asking where she was.
“Oh, we have to go!” Whitney said, standing. Somehow, nearly an hour had gone by.
“We do too. Great talking with you,” Christopher said. “Hey, maybe we’ll see you again next Saturday. We come here every week around this time.”
“Yeah, maybe. That would be nice,” Whitney said. “Tell Gwen I say hi.” She waved as he and Reagan disappeared into the crowd. Then she put her hands into her coat pocket, her fingers suddenly freezing.