Page 20

“The sounds you were making. With your voice. Just now.”

Her face changes color. The warmth floods into her cheeks the way it does when she’s embarrassed, which I’ve observed happens when she’s caught doing something she considers private. “I was just—it’s a song. I was singing. It’s nothing.”

“What song is it?”

“It’s Taylor Swift. It’s—you don’t know who Taylor Swift is?”

“I don’t.”

“She’s a singer. Very famous. I’ve listened to her since college and—it doesn’t matter. I was just humming.”

“I’d like to hear more of it.”

She stares at me. “More of… Taylor Swift?”

“More of you singing. But also the original version, if it exists.”

The color in her face deepens, but she pulls out her phone and puts on the song. The real version. With instruments and production and a voice that isn’t Ruby’s but carries the same melody she was humming—and my systems respond in a way I don’t expect.

I stop. The rag goes still in my hand. Everything else in me goes quiet—because whatever this sound is, it’s the only thing that matters right now.

It’s not data. It’s not useful. It doesn’t solve a problem. It just exists.

The song ends. Another one starts—different, faster.

“Aiden?” Ruby’s voice is soft, careful. “You okay?”

“Can you play the first one again?”

She plays it again. And I stand in her kitchen and everything goes still except the song and whatever is happening inside me, this thing that has no name and no function and no reason to exist except that it does.

The dog happens on Thursday.

A woman comes into the bakery mid-morning with a golden retriever on a leash. The dog is well-behaved—sits by the counter while its owner orders, tail sweeping the floor in slow, steady arcs. I’m in the back kitchen, prepping a delivery, and I can hear the click of its nails on the tile and a sound—breathing, but different from human breathing. Heavier. Wetter. Accompanied by a faint whine.

Then the dog catches a scent.

Me, presumably. Because it pulls toward the kitchen door, nose working, and the owner says, “Bailey, no,” and tugs the leash, but the dog is committed, and the door between the bakery and the kitchen isn’t fully latched, and before anyone can intervene, sixty-five pounds of golden retriever pushes through and finds me crouching by a supply crate.

We look at each other.

I have comprehensive data on all domesticated canine species. I know their evolutionary history, their skeletal structure, their average lifespans across every breed. I have never been within touching distance of one.

The dog—Bailey—sniffs my hand. Then pushes her entire head into my palm. Her fur is softer than anything I’ve ever touched. Her body radiates warmth, and from her chest comes a low, contented rumble.

“Oh,” I say.

Ruby appears in the doorway behind the dog’s owner, who is apologizing profusely. “I’m so sorry, she never does this—Bailey, come here—”

Ruby looks at me. I’m on the kitchen floor with a golden retriever in my lap and my hands in its fur and an expression on my face that I can’t identify, but that Ruby seems to recognize, because she stops moving and just watches me for a moment with that look—the soft one, the one I’ve ranked first among all her expressions.

“It’s fine,” Ruby tells the woman. “He likes dogs.”

I don’t just like dogs. I have no word for what I feel about dogs. The word “like” is insufficient by several orders of magnitude.

After Bailey leaves, I mention her four more times in an hour. Ruby eventually says, “Aiden, drop it. It was just a dog.”

“Her name was Bailey. She was three years old. Her owner said she prefers cheese over treats.”