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“He said he can’t explain it. Does that sound like programming to you? Because every program I’ve ever used can explain exactly why it does what it does. That’s the whole point of programming. It has logic. It has steps. It has a reason.” She pauses. “He doesn’t have a reason. He just has you.”

I press the phone against my ear and close my eyes and don’t say anything because if I open my mouth right now something is going to come out that I can’t take back.

“You’re scared,” Liv says. Gently. “And that’s okay. But you’ve been scared for eight months and all it’s gotten you is a bakery that’s barely open and a vibrator collection.”

“I have one vibrator.”

“I thought you got that new waterproof one?”

“Oh. Right.” I’d forgotten about that. An impulse purchase three months ago when we were shopping for a bachelorette gift for our friend Emily. I’d tucked it into a drawer and forgotten about it.

“My point stands. You deserve to be happy, Ruby. Even if the happy is weird. Even if it doesn’t look like what you expected. Even if it comes with a control panel and no belly button.”

I laugh. It’s wet and shaky and I wipe my face with the back of my hand.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I say.

“Nobody does. That’s the whole thing. You just do it anyway.”

We hang up. I lie in bed and listen to the apartment—the refrigerator, the vent Aiden fixed, the building settling. Through the wall, I can hear nothing, which means he’s on the couch, perfectly still.

I close my eyes.

I don’t sleep for a long time.

Chapter Twenty

Aiden

If It Ain’t Broke

A woman orders a lavender latte and a croissant, and I make both while her dachshund sits by the counter, tail bouncing back and forth.

“Can he have a treat?”

“Sure,” the woman says.

I reach under the register for the jar I keep there now—homemade biscuits, peanut butter and oats, shaped into rough circles because I haven’t perfected the shaping yet. I made them last week after researching dog-safe ingredients. Ruby came downstairs one morning and found a tray of them cooling on the rack next to the muffins and said, “Aiden, we are not selling dog biscuits,” and I said, “They’re free,” and she stared at me and then put the jar under the register without another word.

The dachshund takes the biscuit gently from my hand—soft mouth, warm nose against my palm—and I feel the familiar rush of something I’ve stopped trying to name. I just like dogs. The why doesn’t matter.

“He loves those,” the woman says, smiling. “We were here last week, and he dragged me to the door. I think he comes for you, not the pastries.”

“He has good taste,” I say, and the woman laughs, and she pays and leaves, and I wipe down the counter and look through the kitchen doorway at Ruby.

She’s on the phone. Supplier call, based on her tone—polite but firm, the voice she uses when she’s negotiating something she shouldn’t have to negotiate. Her back is to me. Her hair is up, and there’s a pen tucked behind her ear that she’s forgotten about, and she’s leaning against the prep table the way she leans when she’s been standing too long.

She’s beautiful. I think this every time I look at her, and the thought has never once dimmed. It hits the same now as it did in the utility room—full force, no buffer.

But something is different.

Not in how she looks. In how she looks at me.

It started three days ago. Maybe four—I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, which bothers me because I usually track her shifts down to the minute. But somewhere between the wedding and now, Ruby started performing for me.

I know her smiles. I know all of them—the real ones that use her whole face, the polite ones she gives customers, the deflective ones she uses on her mother, the thin ones that appear when someone mentions Josh. I’ve ranked them.

The smile she’s been giving me this week is new. It’s warm. It’s convincing. Most people wouldn’t notice anything wrong with it.