Page 95 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

I did not finish cleaning.

I cleaned the pee. I rescued the shoe, which was damp but structurally intact. I collected the trash and re-shelved two of the three books—the third had sustained enough chew damage that re-shelving felt dishonest. I refolded the blanket. I mopped the bathroom.

But the dog woke up during this process and began following me, which meant that every surface I cleaned was immediately reinvestigated by a curious animal with no respect for the work I’d just done. She stepped in the mop water. She knocked over the trash can again. She found the flour I’d tracked in on my shoes from the bakery and rolled in it.

By 4:45 a.m., the apartment was in a state I would describe as “partially improved.” The dog was asleep on the couch again, this time on the throw blanket instead of the bra, which I considered progress.

I sat on the floor next to the couch and the dog shifted in her sleep and put her paw on my arm, and her ear—the floppy one—twitched, and she made a small sound that was not quite a snore.

I looked at the chewed book. The damp shoe. The flour paw prints on the kitchen tile that I missed.

Ruby’s alarm goes off at 5:00.

She will be awake in fifteen minutes.

I have fifteen minutes to figure out how to explain that I found a stray dog in the alley and brought it inside and destroyed the bakery kitchen and the apartment and used all the flour and ruined three towels and there’s a shoe in a water bowl and a bra on the couch and I regret nothing.

I sit on the floor and I wait.

The dog’s paw is still on my arm.

At 5:14 a.m. Ruby’s bedroom door opens.

She pads into the hallway in her T-shirt, eyes half-closed, following the path to the coffee maker the way she does every morning—muscle memory, no higher brain function engaged yet.

She makes it four steps before she stops.

I watch her take in the room. The blanket. The flour prints. The general state of chaos that suggests either a break-in or a small tornado with four legs.

Her eyes land on the couch. On the dog, who has lifted her head and is looking at Ruby with the calm, unbothered expression of an animal who has claimed this couch and is not interested in discussing it.

Ruby looks at the dog.

The dog looks at Ruby.

Ruby looks at me. I’m on the floor. Covered in flour and dog hair and mop water. Sitting next to a couch I used to keep immaculate, in an apartment I used to keep perfect, surrounded by evidence of the most chaotic night of my existence.

“Aiden.”

“I can explain.”

“There is a dog on my couch.”

“Yes.”

“There is a dog on my couch, and my apartment looks like a crime scene, and you are covered in flour.”

“The flour is from the bakery. The bath went poorly. She didn’t want the bath.”

“She.”

“The dog. She was in the alley. She was scared and hungry and shaking, and I—” I pause. Look at the dog. Look at Ruby. “I couldn’t leave her there.”

Ruby stares at me for a long time. Her hair is messy and her eyes are puffy and she hasn’t had coffee yet and she’s standing in a destroyed apartment looking at a man who promised to be good at rules and just broke approximately all of them.

“You couldn’t leave her there,” she repeats.

“No.”