“I love this.”

The girl idly pacing the windows of the waiting room stopped, pressed her hand to the glass, and smiled. I couldn’t tell if she’d been talking to me or thinking out loud.

“The snow?”

“Yeah. You don’t?”

It was such an unexpected question. Simple, inconsequential. One you know the answer to, but never think will be asked in real life. Talking to Mara, I’d soon realize, felt like having an endless imagined-in-the-shower conversation.

My answer, “No,” hung back on my tongue and unspooled itself. “I don’t like driving in it.”

“Oh, see—I don’t drive. I love walking in it, playing around, how different it makes everything look....” She drew a smiley face in the fog on the glass.

No, not a face: an anarchy symbol. Before I could question it, she swiped her palm over the entire thing.

“Fairfield,” she added suddenly, then slid her gaze to my shoes and up my body, one effortless glide of judgment. “Right?”

“Uh...yeah. How’d you know?”

“You look like one.” She crossed the waiting room and stuck out her hand. When I shook it, her skin was damp from the glass. “But mostly, you look enough like your brother that I could just tell. I’m Mara, Juliet’s roommate.” She paused. “Well, used to be.”

“Oh.” I was weirdly relieved. It didn’t happen often, someone recognizing Cohen and me in relation to our uncle or the Fairfield family riches. But when it did, I found myself guarded, not flattered. If there was one thing I’d learned from watching the wealthy side of our family my entire life, it was that no shortage of moochers and kiss-asses existed.

With Mara, though, I didn’t feel that. She said “Fairfield” like...any other name.

“Levi,” I added quickly, when I noticed her stare and the quirk of her smile.

“I know.” She said it as though she knew so, so much more about me than I could even guess.

Her body melted like silk into the chair next to mine, legs crossed over the armrest and head tilted back to look at me.

“How goes the party supply business?”

“Fine, I guess.” I sipped my coffee. It was a weak breakfast blend, too much water and not enough heat. “I haven’t focused on it as much as I usually do.”

Mara nodded and popped her gum in the back of her mouth before sitting correctly. “Heard you got divorced. I imagine that’s pretty hard to bounce back from. Like, how are you going to help throw somebody’s dream wedding when you don’t believe in that shit anymore?”

“Who said I don’t believe in it? And I’m not divorced. We’re separated.”

“So you’re still hoping to get back with her.”

“Not...hoping.” My legs shifted, one ankle over the other, then reversed. “More like, not ruling it out. We’re talking about where to go from here, but no decisions yet.”

“When it ends, it ends.” She shrugged and gave me a smile like she was some old hat at this, ushering me into the world of screwed-over spouses.

“That’s my point, though.” I tried to check my tone, but the way she acted like she already knew me made that impossible. “It hasn’t ended. It’s in limbo.”

“So, what, you’re going to try again?”

I hated the way she casually studied her hair, the shock of crimson running through it brighter than the Christmas bows around the hospital. “We’ve been discussing it, yes. And I’d like to. Why not give it another shot? I mean, why not try? That’s marriage.”

“I heard she cheated on you.” Only now did her voice dip, her first sign of sensitivity. “That’s not marriage.”

“People make mistakes. You try and forgive them. You work on the problems together. That’s marriage.”

Mara stared at me as I got to my feet. I was rougher with the coffee pot than necessary. Juliet’s family could be heard down the hall; they were cooing over newborns in the nursery to pass the time. For now, much as I hated it, I was stuck with this girl.

I could have left. Simply excused myself and carried my coffee right out of there, joining everyone else at the wired windows to gush about kids we didn’t know. Failing that, I could have stopped talking to her altogether.

But Mara’s stare: something about it kept me where I was, kept my mouth moving.

“Look,” I said, scalding my lip on the first gulp as I turned, “you probably mean well and all, but you don’t know me. You don’t know my wife, or our relationship. No one does but us. So I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your opinions to yourself.”

The eyes followed me as I sat back down, this time at the end of the row. She didn’t speak.

Thank, God. Even awkward silence was better than some girl telling me the decision I’d agonized over for weeks—whether or not Lindsay deserved a second chance—was wrong.

It was bittersweet, though: we stayed quiet for a long, long time, until the silence felt like a burden feeding off the oxygen in the room.

“Never said I knew your wife. Or you,” she said suddenly. When I looked at her, she was peeling the nail polish off her pinky in one perfect piece. Her eyes shot to mine. “All I’m saying is, if it were me? I’d never be able to trust the person after that.”

There it was again, that look like she did know me. Instead of annoying me, it was starting to weird me out, like when a car happens to take all the same turns as you.

“Trust can be rebuilt,” I said. I put my eyes on the television over her head. It was playing an old Christmas movie Cohen and I used to love, all the characters clay and felt, the background decked out in stretched cotton. It hurt my eyes, recognizing all the materials and pieces of this thing I’d once taken at face value.

“Anyway, I’m sorry.” Mara rummaged through her purse until she came up with some deep red lip gloss. It took too much willpower not to watch the pout of her mouth as she applied it. “It isn’t my business. I just got the feeling you needed to talk it out with somebody impartial.”

On screen, a plastic Santa with pink paint on his cheeks laughed. I looked at her boots, not her, and noticed the film of road salt on the toes. Black boots, black leather jacket, painted-on jeans, that red streak in her hair—hell, even the way she was sitting. It was all so different from Lindsay, who shopped exclusively at places like Abercrombie, never strayed from natural-looking highlights, and kept nail polish to basic pinks and whites. She didn’t pop gum. She didn’t prod people she barely knew with questions that felt like a rug getting pulled out from underneath them, both feet at once.

I couldn’t decide if I liked the differences or not. I did know they made me uncomfortable, because I had no idea how to deal with a woman like Mara, except to get up and leave. Why I didn’t was the biggest mystery of all.

Viola, Juliet’s youngest sister, skidded into the room. “The baby’s stuck.” Her words rushed out like water. She pressed her hand to her heart and took a breath. “They’re doing a C-section.”

Mara and I stood at the same time. Asked, “But everything’s okay?” at the same time, same pitch, same volume.

“Cohen says Juliet’s okay, just freaking out—which, duh—and the baby’s in distress a little, but it should be fine. We’re moving to the other waiting room now.”

We moved like hurricanes, the three of us gathering everyone’s things from all corners of the room and rushing to the other side of the ward. Paul, Juliet’s dad, was pacing the floor when we arrived.

“She’ll be fine, Dad.” Abigail blocked her father’s path and mimed a deep breath, which he didn’t repeat. “You just heard the word ‘emergency’ and fixated on that, but I’m telling you—stuff like this is standard.”

“Why would they call it an ‘emergency section’ if it wasn’t one?”

“Because it just means ‘last-minute,’” she assured him. He paused, stared at her, then resumed pacing. She looked at us and rolled her eyes, officially tagging out.

“I, uh...I got stuck, when I was born.” The words fell out of my mouth and rolled across the floor, landing squarely at everyone’s feet when they looked at me. I felt Mara staring hardest. “My mom gave birth at home, actually, and—and I got stuck in the....”

“Vagina?” Abigail prompted. Viola hid her smirk, elbowing her.

“Birth canal,” I corrected, blushing. Humor in tough times wasn’t my strongest suit. It used to be. Somewhere along the way, I lost that touch—the ability to make people laugh and feel better, without thinking about it. Cohen was the comic relief, nowadays. Maybe people like him, or Abigail, were just destined to crack tension.

Still: as I spoke, I saw Paul’s shoulders shift back to their normal position. His breathing slowed. I was helping.

“I wasn’t moving down at all,” I went on, “so the midwife called an ambulance, and my mom had an emergency C-section at the hospital. She said it sounded scarier than it really was.”

Paul massaged the fingers of one hand with the other. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point—it’s not like babies never get stuck. They plan for this kind of thing happening, right?”

“Exactly,” his daughters chimed, eager to calm him down. He limped to a chair and sank in, the plastic cracking under his weight, but holding.

“Your mom was going to give birth to you at home?” Mara sat beside me as I staked out a seat. “That’s...”

I waited. Without a doubt, she’d have some cutting observation or invasive question for me.

“...badass,” she finished. The smile she flashed caught me more off-guard than anything she’d said to me, so far.

“Yeah, I guess it kind of was. She’s a hippie, though, so it never seemed unusual to me. Until I found out most people don’t do that.”

Mara nodded and fished a cigarette pack from her jacket. “That’s how it goes, isn’t it—you never know how weird your family is until you get context.” She slammed the pack against her palm. “I’m gonna step out. Care to join me?”

“You can’t smoke on hospital grounds.”

“It’s a fucking blizzard outside,” she laughed, and started for the hall. “I seriously doubt anyone’s going to stop me.”

I sat there a second, glancing at Juliet’s family to see if anyone had heard and would offer to go with her, instead. They hadn’t, and didn’t, so I grabbed my coat and caught up to her in the stairwell.

We were silent again. Our footsteps rattled the winding metal and chased us to the bottom, where Mara pushed through a door before I had the chance to hold it for her.

“Look at it!” she squealed, and kicked a fluffy spray of snow at me. The ground was covered in at least five inches and counting, if the swirling white sheet around us was any indication.

“Wow.” I bent down and carved out a handful. “Guess we’re all sleeping here, tonight.”

“The roads were already getting plowed and salted when I left my place, it’ll be fine.” She cupped her lighter in her hand and struggled to keep the cigarette lit; wind whipped from every direction. Finally, she flicked it into the wind.

I stood there under the steel awning of the doorway, watching her. When she caught me, she kicked another pile of snow my way.

“Quit it,” I laughed, and tossed the handful numbing my fingers at her. Her laugh was swallowed up inside the vortex, but I could see it: her head thrown back, teeth glowing white in the floodlight.

“You know,” she called over the storm, “you’re hot as hell.”

I smiled, but had no idea what to say back. Mara was certainly hot, but telling her so seemed too forward. And it was strange seeing her teeth sink into her bottom lip, gloss already gone: she was biting her lip...for me?

It wasn’t like I never got hit on, especially if and when women discovered I was a Fairfield. What threw me was the fact Mara was doing it. I figured she thought I was pathetic, hung up on some woman who’d already obliterated my heart once. I figured she had me pegged as a train wreck not worth saving.

Her body drifted to mine through the snow. Closer and closer, hands sliding up to my shoulders.

She tilted her head.

Stood on her tiptoes.

Closed her eyes.

Even so, I didn’t compute what it all meant until she said, “You know, the easiest way to get over a girl...is another one.”

“I’m sorry.” I put my hands on her arms. All the feeling rushed back into my fingers, the second they touched her. I could make out every crack in the leather on her elbows, the creases under my thumbs, and the stiffness of her muscles as I moved away.

“You’re single,” she reminded me. “It’s not like it’s against any rules.”

“It is, though.” I ran my fingers through my hair. They were numb again. “Like, yeah, I don’t know what’s going to happen with me and Linds...but I want to find out. And until I do....”

Mara put her hands in her pockets and nodded. No offense, no outrage. “Okay,” she said. “I don’t get it, but I respect it.”

I nodded, silently thanking her.

“Can I just give you a piece of advice, though?” Her tongue darted across her lips. A flash of pink in the middle of so much white.

I shrugged. I didn’t want advice. I just knew she’d give it, anyway.

“If it’s true, what I heard—that she was cheating on you for, like, an entire year before you found out...that wasn’t a lapse in judgment. That was a conscious decision.”

Her voice grew soft again. I wasn’t sure when I moved closer, straining to hear; I was just aware, suddenly, of the fact our shoes were touching, somewhere under the snow.

“A one-time thing,” she said, “sure, I could understand giving her another chance. But...Jesus, a year.” She shook her head and looked up at me. Snow rested on her lashes. When she blinked, it fell away, instantly replaced. “People like that, who keep doing something when they know it’s wrong? They don’t change. They don’t want to change. She’s going to break your heart all over again, Levi.”

My heart struggled in the cold. The only thing keeping me alive, I was sure, was the fury that flared in my gut.

But she didn’t look or sound like she was trying to hurt me, saying these things. In fact, it seemed like she was the one hurting. For me.

When I put my hands on her face and kissed her, the feeling in every limb came back like needles—that sudden rush of heat after the chill, every nerve charged. I could taste raspberry, her lip gloss. The muted earth in the tobacco she’d held there, but didn’t smoke. Something...just so different, from the woman I’d known before her.

But it was her hand, lacing itself into the iced hair at the base of my neck and pulling me closer, deepening the kiss, that felt newer than anything else. I couldn’t remember the last time Lindsay kissed me back like that. As though she needed me.

Mara broke the kiss, but let me pull away first.

“I hope I’m wrong about her,” she whispered. Her smile was small and faded. “And if I’m not, I hope you know enough to get out.”