Page 79 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

He’s quiet for a moment. “I was here, and then—” His jaw tightens. “I called you sweetheart.”

“You remember that?”

“It’s in my log. I can see the transcript.” He scans it. His expression darkens. “I told you that you looked lovely. I offered you water. I used the word ‘sweetheart’ twice and touched your knee without invitation.” He looks at me. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. It wasn’t you.”

“I know.” His eyes hold mine. “That’s why I’m apologizing. Because it wore my face and it wasn’t me, and you had to sit here and see it.”

Gemma quietly packs her toolkit. She closes the panel, clicks it shut, and stands up.

“I’m going to go,” she says. “I’ve got enough data for now, and you two need to—” She gestures vaguely. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

She lets herself out. The apartment goes quiet.

Aiden and I sit on the couch. Him on one end, me on the other. The gap between us is maybe two feet, and it’s the loudest two feet in the room.

“Ruby.”

“Yeah.”

“The protocol version. What was it like?”

I pick at a thread on the couch cushion. “It was perfect.”

“Perfect how?”

“Perfect in every way. Smooth. Polished. Said all the right things. Smiled at all the right times. It was everything a companion is supposed to be.”

He’s quiet. Then after a moment he says, “And you hated it.”

“I hated it so much I wanted to throw up.”

“Why?”

I look at him. At his face—the real one, with the furrow and the intensity and the slight asymmetry of his almost-smile. At his hands on his knees, still and steady, the hands that shook when I took my dress off. At his eyes, dark and focused and aimed at me with the full weight of his attention, the way they’ve been aimed at me since the utility room.

“Because it wasn’t you,” I say. “It looked like you and sounded like you and it said things you would say, but it was empty. There was no one behind it. No weird dog obsession. No calorie tracking. No—” My voice cracks. “No you.”

“Ruby—”

“I’ve been scared.” The words come out fast, tripping over each other. “I’ve been scared for weeks that what you feel is just programming. That you’re executing a protocol and calling it love. And I couldn’t prove it wasn’t, and the not knowing was eating me alive.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just listens, the way he always listens—completely.

“But I just saw the protocol,” I say. “I just sat next to it. And it was NOTHING, Aiden. It was a smile with no person behind it. It was everything you were designed to be, and it had nothing—nothing—to do with who you actually are.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “You are weird and too honest and you don’t understand sarcasm and you reorganize my life without asking and you love dogs more than most people love anything, and none of that is in any programming. None of it. That’s just you.”

He’s looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen before. Not the processing look, not the clinical observation, not the gentle focus. Something raw and cracked open, like a door he’s been holding shut just came off its hinges.

“Ruby,” he says, and his voice is rough. “I don’t have the protocol’s vocabulary. I can’t say the smooth thing at the right time. I can only say what’s true.”

“Then say it.”

“I love you.” There’s no pause. No processing delay. No searching for the word. It’s just there, immediate and whole, like it’s been sitting in his mouth waiting for permission to leave. “I love you, and it’s not a program, and it’s not a protocol, and I know this because the program would do it better. The program would say it at the right moment with the right tone and the right face. I’m saying it on a couch on a Saturday afternoon because you’re crying and I can’t not say it anymore. It’s been true for a long time. I just didn’t know if I should tell you.”

I stare at him. My face is wet. My hands are shaking. Then I cross the two feet of couch between us so fast I nearly knock him over. My hands find his face, and I kiss him—messy, urgent, tasting like tears and coffee—and he catches me, his arms going around my waist, pulling me into his lap, and the kiss is nothing like the polished protocol version would deliver. It’s clumsy and desperate and real, and his hands are in my hair, and mine are gripping his shirt, and I’m crying and kissing him at the same time, and I don’t care.

“I love you too,” I say against his mouth. “You impossible, weird, dog-obsessed—”