Chapter 8: Sixty-Two Drafts

Victor's POV

I get up at 5:10 every morning, and on Wednesday I did it on a couch with a cat on my chest.

Nadia's apartment was dark and smelled of lemon, which I had caused.

She was asleep behind a closed door.

I lay very still in a gray T-shirt that said Fun Run and listened to her breathe through the wall.

It was not a thing I intended to do.

I took out my phone and opened the app I use on Sundays.

It was a scheduling app for messages, and the account on it was my brother's.

There were sixty-two drafts in the queue, set for 7:02 each morning, all paused.

I'd paused them on Saturday in the hospital stairwell, with my hand still shaking from the vows.

I had not deleted them.

I scrolled to the top one.

"Rain today. Take the green umbrella, the one that doesn't flip."

I'd written that three weeks ago, on a Sunday, at my own kitchen counter.

It was for a woman who thought my brother was thinking of her.

My thumb hovered over delete.

"It's a favor," I said to the cat.

The cat looked at me.

"It was a favor," I said, and put the phone face down on my chest.

I told myself I would sort it out by Friday.

At 7:20 I was in the test kitchen with a pot of onions, and at 7:45 Marcy Doyle walked in.

She wore a yellow raincoat and a look of great purpose.

"I need three minutes," she said, "and you're not going to make a joke."

"I never make jokes before eight."

"That's a joke."

"It's a statement of policy."

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