Page 38 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

“Both,” I say. “Depending on the day.”

He nods. Files it away. Turns back to the window.

We drive in silence for a while. We listen to music, mostly Taylor Swift. I sense there’s a joke in there somewhere that Avery would make about how Aiden is the perfect boyfriend, letting me pick the playlist. The music fills the car without crowding it, and the road is straight and the afternoon light is warm through the windshield, and for a few miles I almost forget where we’re going and why.

“Tell me about your family,” he says.

“My mom is… a lot,” I say. “She loves hard and loud and without boundaries, and she means well even when she’s driving me insane. She’s been worse since my dad died. More hovering. More invested in my love life. More everything.”

“Your father died?”

“Six years ago. Heart attack. He was fifty-seven.” I keep my eyes on the road because this part is easier when I’m looking at something that’s moving. “He was the quiet one. Mom is the storm; Dad was the eye of it. He’d just sit there while she whirled around him, and he’d catch my eye across the table and give me this little smile, like, ‘I know, just ride it out.’“

The car is quiet for a moment. Just the road and the music and the hum of the engine.

“When he died, the eye went away. And it’s just been the storm since.” I swallow. “She’s not bad. She’s just scared. She lost her husband, her daughter’s alone, her son is a cop, which can be a dangerous job. She manages her fear by managing us, and I let her because fighting her takes more energy than I have.”

“You miss him,” Aiden says. It’s not a question.

“Every day.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Then he says, “I don’t have a frame of reference for losing someone. But I understand that your father was a person who made you feel safe, and that his absence created a space that hasn’t been filled. And I’m sorry that space exists.”

I grip the steering wheel with both hands. He notices. He doesn’t say anything about it.

We pass a rest stop. A billboard for a mattress store. A field with cows that Aiden watches with focused interest until they’re out of sight.

“Tell me about the bakery,” he says. “Not the business. Why you opened it.”

“My grandmother.” The word comes out softer than I expect. “She was a baker. Not professionally—she just baked. Every weekend I’d go to her house and we’d make things together. Bread, cookies, cakes. She never measured anything. It was all by feel—a handful of this, a pinch of that. She’d put my hands in the dough and say, ‘You’ll know when it’s right,’ and I never understood what she meant until I did.”

“When did she die?”

“Eight years ago. I opened the bakery two years later, which is insane because I had no money and no business plan and no idea what I was doing. But I had her recipes and I had this feeling like if I didn’t do it, she’d really be gone. Gone, gone.”

I realize I’m talking more than I’ve talked about this in years. Maybe ever. Something about the car, the road, him, maybe—I can just talk. And he just listens.

“What were you like before the bakery?” he asks. “Before Josh. Before all of it.”

I laugh. Short, surprised. “I don’t know. Lighter? I went out more. I laughed more. I didn’t check my bank account every morning like a medical report. I was just—” I search for the word. “Easier. I was easier to be around.”

“You’re not difficult to be around.”

“Aiden.”

“You’re not. You’re stressed and stubborn, but you’re also funny and kind.”

I don’t say anything for a mile.

“Why don’t you have a husband?” he asks.

I nearly swerve. “What?”

“You’re thirty. You’re intelligent, physically attractive, professionally skilled, and interpersonally warm. Based on statistical patterns, a person with your attributes would typically be in a long-term partnership by this age. Why aren’t you?”

I stutter out an unintelligible sound, brain buffering. I wasn’t prepared for this. For what you do when all your life all you’ve ever wanted is to be useful, and accepted and loved. But somehow love never found you and now a synthetic man is asking you why not.

I stare at the lines in the road. “That’s—you can’t just ask someone that.”