Chapter thirty-three
George
The apartment smells like beer and someone's catastrophically bad decision to microwave fish at a poker night. I identify the offender immediately, but I let it go, because I'm a guest and this is, technically, a celebration. A bachelor party for my soon-to-be brother-in-law.
I take the chair nearest the exit. Daniel's cousin claims this is "the loser seat," announced with the confidence of a man who has never considered that seating position has absolutely no statistical bearing on poker outcomes. I smile at him in a way that communicates nothing useful and pull the chair out anyway.
The cards are dealt, and I'm already calculating odds before I've touched mine. It's not something I decide to do. It's just what happens, the same way some people tap their feet or crack their knuckles. My brain runs the numbers like a background process that never fully closes.
Daniel watches me from across the table with the expression of a man who has already made his peace with something. I fold on the first hand without looking at my cards.
"You didn't even look at them." Daniel's cousin points at the untouched cards like they're crime scene evidence. Like the cards themselves have been wronged.
"Statistically it wasn't worth the risk," I say, and reach for my beer.
The table erupts. I apparently said something offensive, though I couldn't tell you what. Someone makes a noise that I can only describe as personally affronted. Daniel's college friend, Marcus, leans back in his chair and grins at me.
"Do you do this at restaurants too?" he asks. "Just calculate the menu and leave?"
I consider telling him that I do, in fact, have a preferred ordering algorithm for unfamiliar menus, that it accounts for preparation complexity and kitchen throughput and the statistical likelihood of a dish being misrepresented by its description. I decide against it. Some information is best withheld for social cohesion.
Daniel laughs into his beer and it's the most relaxed I've seen him all night. It does something to the tension in my shoulders that I don't fully examine.
I win the next hand, which somehow makes everyone angrier than the folding did. Brendan, the loud cousin, deals the next round and mutters audibly about the wisdom of inviting accountants to bachelor nights.
"I'm not an accountant," I say.
"What do you do?"
"Compatibility algorithms."
The table goes quiet for exactly two seconds and then Marcus says, "So you're the reason my sister met that guy," and everyonelaughs except me, because I don't know his sister or which guy he's referring to or whether that's a compliment.
Brendan tips his beer in my direction. "Wasn't your girlfriend the matchmaker at your company?" He says it casually, the way people say things they don't realize are grenades.
The wordgirlfriendlands somewhere beneath my sternum, specific and unwelcome.
"We're not together anymore," I say. My voice comes out flatter than I intend, stripped of everything I don't know how to express out loud. Someone at the far end of the table pivots to wedding logistics and the moment dissolves, but Daniel is still watching me with that careful, unhurried attention that has always made him a better friend than I probably deserve.
He waits until the hand is finished. Then, quietly, almost as an aside: "You built an entire system to find the right person." He sets his cards face down and looks at me directly. "But it felt different when she was right in front of you."
I don't answer. There is no statistically sound rebuttal to something that is simply, plainly true, and I have enough self-awareness to recognize when the data is not on my side.
I fold the next hand on purpose and go get another beer just to have something useful to do with my hands.
***
Outside, the city has settled into the midnight version of itself. It's quiet enough that you can hear your own thoughts, which is not always the gift it sounds like. The air is cold and sharp and smells like pavement and someone's distant cigarette, and I lean against the railing and let it cool the back of my neck.
Daniel comes out a few minutes later. He doesn't say anything immediately, just takes up a position beside me and looks out atthe street below, and I've always appreciated that about him. He never mistakes silence for emptiness.
"Eleanor's worried about both of you," he says finally.
I think about the last conversation Tessa and I had. The way it ended with me being technically correct and entirely wrong at the same time, which is a specific kind of defeat that the algorithm has no metric for.
"You're afraid people are going to reshape your life," Daniel says. He keeps his voice low, conversational, like he's observing the weather rather than dismantling something I've spent years constructing. It doesn't feel like an accusation. It feels worse than that: it feels accurate.
I look at him sharply. He holds up one hand, not retreating, just holding his ground with the patience of a man who knows he's right and isn't in any hurry to prove it.
