She’s waiting for him to say it’s okay, to embrace her, say he loves her, they’ll work it out. He can feel her desire like a rope tugging on him. It would make her so happy. But he can’t make her happy. All he can think is that, on paper, he should be ready for this. He’s thirty-four. He has a good-paying job, a reliable car. He lives with a woman who loves him. From the outside, everything is in place, ready, set, go, let’s have a baby. But he can’t breathe. He sees himself working at Insuracorp for the next twenty years, or someplace like it. All the while his vague hope for something else, his lost other life, drifting out of reach.