Page 16 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

Ruby

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He’s standing three feet away from me in a kitchen that suddenly feels like a closet.

The faucet doesn’t drip. The counter is clean. The apartment is quiet in a way it’s never been quiet before because Aiden cleaned the dust out of the heating vent, and now even the rattle is gone. All I can hear is his hum—low, steady, the sound that lives where a heartbeat should be—and my own breathing, which I’m suddenly very aware of.

“You notice me,” I repeat, because I don’t know what else to say and because maybe if I say it back to him it’ll sound less like a grenade.

“Yes.” He says it the way he says everything—like a fact, like the weather, like the answer is so obvious that the question barely needed asking. “Your breathing pattern changes when you’re uncomfortable. Your posture shifts to the left when you’re deflecting. You touch your collarbone when you’re thinking about something you don’t want to say out loud.”

My hand is on my collarbone.

I drop it.

“That’s—” I start, and then I don’t finish because what am I going to say? That it’s creepy? I’ve already used that word twice, and it didn’t stick. That it’s invasive? He doesn’t understand the concept. That it’s terrifying to be standing in my own kitchen with a man who’s known me for twenty-four hours and already reads me better than anyone I’ve ever dated?

I go with, “Most people don’t notice that stuff.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No,” I say. “You’re really not.”

He tilts his head. The processing tilt. I’m getting used to it—the slight angle, the pause, the way his eyes go just barely unfocused for a fraction of a second before sharpening again. Whatever happens in his head during those beats, it’s fast and it’s thorough, and the results are usually something I’m not prepared to hear.

“Who is Josh?”

My chest hitches. “My ex.”

“The one whose wedding you’re attending?”

“No. It’s not his wedding. It’s my cousin Natalie’s wedding. He’s just—he’ll be there. He’s close friends with the groom.”

Aiden processes this. “And this bothers you.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

He looks at me. Doesn’t say anything. Just looks, with those dark, steady eyes that glow faintly amber in my dim kitchen, and I can feel him cataloging my response—the arms crossed tighter, the jaw set, the careful blankness.

“Okay,” I say. “It bothers me a little.”

“Why?”

“Because—” I push off the counter and move to the sink. I rinse a glass that’s already clean. “Because he moved on. Fast. Like, really fast.” I stare at the water running over my hands. “We were together for three years. Three years. Then eight months later he was engaged to someone else.”

The laugh that comes out isn’t really a laugh.

“And I know I’m not supposed to care. We broke up. It was the right thing. We weren’t working. I know all of that.” I set the glass down. “But eight months is fast.” My throat tightens. “Eight months is either proof he found his soulmate… or proof he never loved me as much as I thought he did.”

The words hang there.

I wish I could grab them and shove them back into my mouth.

I’m saying more than I mean to. I can feel it happening—the words spilling out into the quiet kitchen because Aiden is listening the way Aiden listens, which is completely, without interruption, without judgment, and without the slight shift in attention that tells you someone is just waiting for their turn to talk. He’s not waiting. He’s receiving. Processing everything I’m giving him.

“He didn’t—it wasn’t dramatic,” I say. “He didn’t cheat or lie or do anything terrible. He just… stopped. Stopped asking about my day. Stopped coming to the bakery. Stopped looking at me like I was interesting. We never had sex anymore. And by the time he actually left, I didn’t even cry because there was nothing left to cry about. He’d been leaving for months. The breakup was just whatever.”

The glass is very clean. I’m still rinsing it.