“Henry keeps dealing. When all the cards have been separated, I pick up my stack and shuffle my cards again. Then I look up into Henry's eyes, and he's staring back at me, at my tears, and I see all these tiny wrinkles around his eyes-sadness wrinkles. He frowns, biting his lip.”

“You're staring at me again," Ash murmured without turning his head, though one corner of his lips quirked up. His silver eyes danced mischievously. "Is it the uniform? Perhaps I should remove it it it's distracting.""Behave, Ash." I wrinkled my nose at him, smiling.”

“Now that we all have partners, all husbands should come pick up theirprojects."Pick up our project? Shrugging, I stand up and stretch my arms. Henry also stands. "No way, dude," I say. "I'm the man in this relationship.""Oh yeah, absolutely," he says, grinning. He sits back down as I walk to the closet to see this project, which turns out to be one of those fakeelectronic babies. Oh good God. Ms. Bonner hands me a fake baby boy. The doll has these creepy glass eyes that look like they’re staring straightinto my soul. I hold the doll out in front of me like it's a flaming bag of poo and carry it back to Henry."Congratulations, Mommy," I say, dropping the doll into his hands. You could've told me I knocked you up.”

“Henry looks from my face back to the field, and his eyes pop open wide. I turn to see why he's gaping: JJ and Carter are messing around, tryingto shove a scrawny wide receiver into Jerry Rice's stroller."JJ!" Henry yells, "You can't fit a freshman in that stroller.”

“The tight sound of Jenks’s wings prompted a flurry of motion, and I watched Bis jam the wad of paper into his mouth and Belle yank a hand of homemade cards from under her leg. Bis suddenly had a hand of cards, too—looking tiny in his craggy fist—and I rolled my eyes when he threw a card down on the pile as Jenks flew in.”

“He looked at me, finally. I wanted to believe I saw softness in his eyes, but I could have imagined it. I did that all the time. All I had to do was close my eyes and I could see him reaching toward me, his lips millimeters from my own. But always… always I opened my eyes and it wasn’t real.”