Page 19 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

I stay in the back during business hours. That was the agreement—I can help, but no one sees me. I prep ingredients, clean equipment, monitor oven temperatures with a precision Ruby says is “honestly unsettling,” and manage the inventory system.

Through the kitchen door, I can hear her with customers—her voice shifts when she’s working. Warmer. More practiced. She asks people about their days and remembers their answers and calls regulars by name. She’s good at this, better than she gives herself credit for. Her business isn’t failing because of her talent. It’s failing because she’s one person doing the work of three, and she won’t ask for help, and it bothers me in a way I can’t turn off.

By the third day, she started leaving me a list.

The first list had five items. I finished them by 8:00 a.m. and spent the rest of the day finding twelve more things that needed doing that she hadn’t written down. The second list had eight items. Same result. By the fourth day, there was no list, and she said, “Just—do whatever you want. I give up.” And then she paused in the doorway and added, “Within reason,” which is a phrase I’ve learned has a very different meaning for humans than it does for me.

I don’t sleep, which means the hours between her going to bed and the bakery opening are mine. Ruby knows I spend them downstairs—she’s stopped being surprised when she comes down at 5:30 to find things different than she left them. The oven vent was first. She’d mentioned it was broken, casually, the way she mentions everything that’s wrong—like it’s a fact she’s accepted rather than a problem she expects anyone to solve. But the motor wasn’t broken. It was seized. The bearings needed cleaning and the housing needed realignment. It took forty-seven minutes.

After that, it was the wobble in the prep table. The flickering light in the walk-in. The grout along the back wall. The stockroom, which I reorganized from chaos into a system based on frequency of use, contamination risk, and expiration date. Her flour had been stored next to her cleaning supplies. Her backup vanilla extract was behind a case of napkins, and she’d reordered because she thought she’d run out, and the unnecessary expense was exactly the kind of thing that’s slowly drowning her.

She came downstairs that morning and stood in the stockroom doorway with her coffee, looking at everything.

“You reorganized my stockroom.”

“Yes.”

She walked along the shelves, touching things, reading labels. I watched her see the vanilla extract she didn’t know she had. The flour safely separated from the chemicals. The sugar consolidated onto one shelf with the backup inventory clearly labeled.

She was quiet for a long time, and her expression had layers I couldn’t separate—gratitude stacked on top of something heavier, something that looked almost like grief. I couldn’t understand why organized shelves would make someone look like that until I cross-referenced it with everything I’d observed about Ruby over the past four days. The answer I arrived at was this: nobody helps her. She carries everything alone, and she’s so used to it that someone rearranging her stockroom at 3:00 a.m. because they noticed she was struggling hits her somewhere she doesn’t let people reach.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

I wanted to say something. I wanted to say that her business isn’t failing because she’s not good enough—it’s failing because the operational load exceeds her capacity, and that’s a structural problem, not a personal one. If she’d let me handle the logistics, she could go back to the part she actually loves, the part where she creates things that make people close their eyes on the first bite.

But I don’t know how to do any of that, so I said, “You’re welcome.”

I should mention the laptop incident. It’s relevant.

Ruby left her laptop open on the counter on day two, and I researched seventy-three topics in forty minutes. These included the Elysium Labs shutdown, the Synthetic Companions Prohibition Act, optimal flour storage temperatures, the average lifespan of a fiddle leaf fig (there’s one in Ruby’s apartment that appears to be dying, and I wanted to understand why), the current real estate market in Ruby’s zip code, what a “situationship” means (Liv said it during her visit and I couldn’t find the definition in my standard language databases), Ruby’s social media profiles, and a Reddit thread titled “Is My Boyfriend A Robot: Serious Answers Only” that I found deeply relevant.

I also spent time on Josh’s Instagram. His profile is public. He has 847 followers and posts primarily about golf, his fiancée, and meals at restaurants where the portions are artistic. His most recent post is a photo of Audrey with the caption “My forever” and three heart emojis. I studied this post for longer than I should have.

It bothered me. Not the photo. The fact that this photo exists and Ruby has to see it.

Then I looked up Ruby. She hasn’t posted in four months. Her last photo is a cake she made—three layers, intricate frosting, clearly hours of work—and the caption says “Sometimes you just need to make something beautiful.” It has forty-two likes. Josh’s golf photo has two hundred and eight.

This disparity bothers me, and I don’t know why.

When Ruby saw the browser history, she closed the laptop slowly, looked at me, and said, “We need to talk about boundaries.”

I told her I didn’t fully understand the concept.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m getting that.”

I don’t have laptop access anymore. This is probably fair.

Ruby hums while she works. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it—her focus is on the task, her hands moving through prep or wiping down the counter, and the sound comes out of her like a background process. Low, melodic, imprecise. Not a performance. More like something leaking from a part of her she doesn’t monitor.

It’s nice.

I’ve been hearing it for days, cataloging the patterns—she seems to hum when she’s calm. On Wednesday morning, she’s rolling out dough for a custom order and she starts singing. Quietly, under her breath, not for anyone. Just for the room.

I stop what I’m doing.

“What is that?”

She startles. Looks up. “What is what?”