They Ignored Me on My Birthday, So I Cancelled Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Miles Budget

He reads what they say about what he pays for; at the diner Hallie wipes the water from his jaw, and Brynn is outside the window.

I picked up the tablet and opened the chat.

It had four members, and the title was the only joke in it.

The first message was from March.

Lindy: Miles Budget is live. Everything he covers goes in the sheet. Rent, passes, dinners, her car insurance. Add what I missed.

Daphne had added a row for the steakhouse deposit and a row for my gas.

Brynn had added a row that said, Birthday gift?? and then a line under it that said, he'll buy himself something lol.

I scrolled down with my thumb.

Lindy: Total for the year is up to nineteen thousand.

Daphne: poor guy

Brynn: poor guy is the nicest ATM in Ohio

I stopped there and read it again.

Then I kept going, because I had to know what else was in the thing I had been paying for.

Trent: keep him paying till spring. then I'll have the loft sorted and she can walk away clean

Brynn: he won't make a scene. he never does.

Lindy: Birthday plan. Front bench is ours, he takes row two, nobody mentions it. Let's see if he says anything.

Daphne: and if he DOES say something?

Lindy: he won't. He thanks the waiter for refilling his water.

Brynn: ok he's SO sweet but I'm dying lol, it's like dating a golden retriever

Trent: you're not dating him. you're renting him.

There was a laughing face under that, and it was Brynn's.

I put the tablet down very gently.

For two years I had thought something was wrong with me.

I had thought I was boring, or too tired after work, or too quiet at her friends' parties.

I had thought that if I paid the bill a little faster, or planned the weekend a little better, she would turn around and look at me.

She had been looking at me the whole time. She had been looking at the total.

I took screenshots of every message, all the way back to March.

I emailed them to myself, and then to a second address, and then I sat at the kitchen table until the window turned gray.

Brynn's door stayed shut.

At eight I texted the number on my phone.

Me: I have your sweatshirt. Where can I give it back?

She answered in less than a minute.

Hallie: There's a diner on Fifth. Pearl's. Corner booth. I'll buy you eggs.

I left the apartment before Brynn woke up.

Pearl's was nearly empty on a Sunday morning.

Hallie was already in the corner booth with her coffee, wearing the gray canvas jacket and a white shirt, her braid pinned up at the back of her neck.

She looked up when the bell over the door rang.

She looked at me for a long moment, studying my face.

"You look like you didn't sleep," she said.

"I didn't."

I put the folded sweatshirt on the table. I had washed it, dried it and ironed it, because I couldn't sit still.

She looked at it, and then at me, and smiled a little.

"You ironed it."

"I was up."

The waitress came and Hallie ordered eggs for both of us without asking what I wanted, which was the right thing to do.

I told her about the chat.

I hadn't planned to. It just came out, line by line, in the voice I use for a patient's chart.

She didn't say a word while I talked.

She stirred her coffee, which had no sugar in it. When I got to the part about the golden retriever, her mouth went flat.

"The one who said you were being rented," she said. "That's the tall one. The one with the arm."

"Trent."

"What does he do?"

"Something in hardware. He manages stores for a family chain. He says he's about to open his own."

"Does he." She picked up her cup and put it down without drinking. "Everybody in that chat is a thief, Miles."

She had said my name once before, in passing, and this time she said it like she meant it.

I looked at my plate so I wouldn't have to look at her.

"I know," I said. "I paid for all of it. I think I thought somebody would say thank you."

Her hand came across the table and she took a napkin.

"Hold still. You've got shaving cream under your jaw."

She touched it, one thumb along the line of the bone, and the napkin was cold from the water glass.

I didn't move.

Her thumb stayed a moment longer than a napkin needed.

Then she took her hand back, and glanced out the window, and set the napkin down very carefully.

"What would you do," she said, "if they came to find you?"

"They won't. Brynn thinks I'm coming back by Friday."

"She does."

Hallie turned her face toward the glass.

"Then I think you should look to your left," she said.

I looked.

Brynn was standing on the sidewalk outside Pearl's, in her pink vest, with her phone up and her hand on the glass.

Daphne was right behind her, pointing at me.

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