Page 94 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

I shut the folder halfway, then open it again almost immediately, because the thought has never actually left. It’s only been contained. Disciplined. Set aside in favor of everything more immediate, more necessary.

But now…

Now there are new variables.

The demo, architecture revisions that don’t sit quite right, the same instinct I had then, quiet but persistent, telling me something isn’t as clean as it appears.

I reach for a pen, pull a blank sheet toward me, and list the discrepancies without conclusions or theories.

Just facts.

The system response lag, the feedback loop inconsistency, the minor deviation in stabilization timing that was written off as environmental interference.

I write them down in clean lines.

This is how it starts again, but I won’t allow it to become an obsession this time. I’ll analyze in a controlled and intentional manner, and if there's more here, I’ll find it. Properly this time.

Without losing everything else in the process.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Addy

If you toldme a month ago that I’d be standing in a Chicago bar, wearing a dress I didn’t hate, drinking an overpriced fruity drink with a woman I met three weeks ago while laughing about emotionally unavailable men…

I would’ve said, respectfully, that you were delusional.

And yet…

Here I am.

“Okay,” Sophie says, leaning across the small high-top table toward me, eyes bright with mischief and probably tequila, “rule number one.”

“There are rules?” I ask, suspicious.

“There are always rules.”

“I don’t like that.”

“You’ll like this one,” she says. “We're not allowed to talk about your boss for at least… twenty minutes.”

I stare at her.

She stares back.

I take a sip of my drink. “That feels targeted.”

“Itistargeted.”

“I wasn’t going to talk about him.”

Sophie rolls her eyes with the confidence of a woman who has already won. “You were literally about to. I can see it in your face.”

I take a sip of my drink to buy myself time.

Unfortunately, alcohol doesn’t make me less transparent.

“That could have been about anything,” I say.