After the condom broke, Daniel had offered to run out to the pharmacy for Plan B, but she wouldn’t have been able to do the presentation the way she wanted to with that hormone circus going on inside her body.

The next afternoon, with the staff gathered around in Nick’s office, she’d ducked out, telling everyone she had to use the bathroom, and reentered in a Missy Elliott–style tracksuit as one of the band members began to beat box. “This is a rap battle, bitches,” she yelled. Nick made a face like a kid entering a candy store. “The issue? The motherfucking electoral college!” She paused. “Obviously we can’t say ‘motherfucking’ on air.” Then she’d launched into it.

After the presentation went so well (she’d nailed it; she was a queen; Nick was totally on board), she had to go out for celebratory drinks with the guys, and by the time she woke up hungover the next morning and popped the little pill into her mouth, lo and behold, Charlie had already laid claim to her uterus.

She couldn’t be a woman who’d had two abortions. She was thirty-two and married, for Christ’s sake, to a wonderful guy who’d been aching to be a father since, probably, the moment he’d popped out of his own mother. (He even told dad jokes and wore flannel pajama pants and developed strange, passionate interests in hobbies like watercolors and woodworking that flamed out after six months or so. Prime dad material.) Besides, when she let herself think about it, she liked the idea of a mini Amara-Daniel hybrid waiting for her at the door, hurtling into her when she came home from work, before she’d even had time to set down her purse. Of the three of them snuggling in bed on Sunday mornings, bleary and content, the little nugget watching idiotic cartoons while Amara and Daniel passed the New York Times back and forth. She was going to lean the fuck in and master that mythical beast known as Having It All.

She told Nick when she was four months along, and he pounded his desk in congratulations, offering her some of the Scotch he kept in his desk for “special occasions” (which seemed to happen every day; Amara was worried he was a bit of an alcoholic) before remembering that she wasn’t supposed to drink. By this point, “Rapping the Issues” clips had gone viral a couple of times, most notably the debate on universal health care in which the celebrity guest, a dainty, young Oscar-nominated actress, threw down like none other.

Nick arranged for Amara to stop coming into the office two weeks before her due date and then to take a full month off when the baby was born before she dove right back in. It was not the ideal time to go away. Their showrunner would be leaving soon to move to LA, and Nick was going to try to take on the position himself. He had no idea the amount of work that went on behind the scenes while he goofed around, so the experiment would probably end in a matter of weeks, and he’d promote one of the producers. Her coworkers were all dividing up her work while she was gone, with Robby taking on her primary duties. Robby was a pompous skid mark of a man, with a beard that badly needed a trim and a beer belly that he carried around like a policeman’s badge—proof that he was Chief of the Fun Times Bureau. He never turned down a swig of Nick’s Scotch.

So she’d simply have to work her ass off. She came back after her brief maternity leave, her reservoirs of patience near empty, exhausted but ready to go. Nick oohed and aahhhed over the pictures of wrinkled-up Charlie and told her she should feel free to duck out early if she needed to. At one point, when she tried to talk to Robby about a scheduling issue with a guest, he laughed and said, “Hey, relax! Put your feet up, Mama. You just did the hardest work anyone can do.” But she couldn’t relax. She was a woman, she was black, and now she was a mother. She had to be twice as good—no, three times as good—as everyone else.

Near the end of a staff meeting a few days after she’d made her return, Nick brought up “Rapping the Issues.” A former boy-band singer who’d struck out on his own was coming in soon, and he wanted to do the segment.

“I was thinking immigration,” Amara said. She’d written up a draft for it over the past two nights, in between Charlie’s crying, and it had real potential. Now she tried to fluff her shirt out away from her chest without being obvious. She suspected that one of her boobs had started leaking, but she couldn’t tell for sure. Shit, it hurt, but she wasn’t about to hit pause for everyone so she could go pump, especially since the women’s bathroom was on a whole different floor. Lord, this meeting was dragging on forever, clear proof that Nick did not know how to run things properly. This would never happen when (If, she reminded herself. Don’t get cocky) she was showrunner.

“Cool, cool,” Nick said.

“Oh, man,” Robby interrupted, leaning back in his chair. Just a little farther, Amara thought, and you’ll tip over. “You know what would be awesome? If we did it about hoverboards.”

“What?” Amara asked. She snuck a peek down at her shirt, which had sprouted a dark stain. She was leaking all right. She tried to cover it with her arm but accidentally knocked that arm into her breast, sending a shock wave of pain through her body.

Robby smirked. “Nick knows what I’m talking about, right?” Nick gave that sheepish, adorable laugh of his (it had spawned a thousand GIFs when he unleashed it on the show) while Robby leaned forward, grinning at Amara. “We got one sent to the office while you were gone, and we all got drunk and tried to ride it. Nick totally face-planted in the middle of the hallway.”

“Right,” Amara said. “But hoverboards aren’t an issue.”

“There’s an issue about whether or not they’re safe,” said Robby. “’Cause they keep exploding. And there’s an issue about whether or not they’re totally lame. Which they are. We could even do the whole thing with the two of them on hoverboards, and it would be hilarious.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Hoverboards! I think that would be fun. We should do it. Robby, do you want to take first pass?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Amara said.

“Whoa.” Nick looked at her in surprise. The other writers at the table suddenly started concentrating on their sandwiches like grass-fed roast beef was the goddamn Mona Lisa. “What?”

“Number one, that’s my segment.”

“It’s just this one time,” Nick said. “It’ll be fun. And it’s so much work to produce. Maybe it’s safer if Robby takes the lead, since things are so crazy for you at home right now.”

“Things at home are fine. And number two, this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t make any sense to do it about fucking hoverboards.”

“I don’t get what the problem is,” Nick said, his face starting to turn red in annoyance. “I think it sounds fun.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You think it could be fun? You hadn’t said.” Tears began to gather behind Amara’s eyes, but she’d never cried at work, and she wasn’t about to start now. She pushed her chair back and stood up, as the lily-white writers (all of them men, most of them young) stared at her like she was an exotic animal liable to hurt someone at any moment. The slightest, smarmiest smile played across Robby’s face, and she knew she was about to do exactly what he wanted, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I need to go pump because my tits feel like they’re going to explode. Or perhaps I should stay here, and they’ll just shoot out milk like fireworks. That’s fun, right?”