He Ranked Her First, I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Home

I took the cuff off his arm and rolled it up.

I took my time doing it.

"Is her login open right now?" I said.

He nodded.

He took out his phone and showed me.

Her application, her list, her name across the top.

"Have you changed anything?"

"No. I swear. I just keep looking at it."

"Okay," I said. "Here's what you do. Log out. Right now, while I watch."

He looked at me.

Then he pressed it.

The screen went to a login page.

"Now text her. Tell her you've had her password since second year, and you're giving it back, and you saw Seattle. And ask her what she wants."

"What if she wants Seattle?"

"Then you find out tonight, instead of in March."

He typed for a long time.

He deleted it twice.

Then he sent it and put the phone face down on the exam table, the way I had once.

It buzzed in under a minute.

He read it.

His face did something complicated.

"She says thank you," he said. "She says she was scared to tell me. She says can we get dinner."

"Then go get dinner."

He stood up and grabbed his backpack.

At the door he turned around.

"Your pressure's still high," I told him. "Come back next Wednesday."

"Seven to whenever?"

"Seven to whenever."

I moved upstairs in October.

Not to the clinic.

To the third floor.

It took one afternoon, Jodie, her wife, and a borrowed van with a bad clutch.

I didn't have much.

Books, scrubs, a box of kitchen things, my mother's old quilt.

Judson never came back for his PlayStation, so it went to the welder's granddaughter.

"You're sure?" Jodie said on the last trip up, with a lamp under each arm. "Three flights of stairs and a man who whistles?"

"I'm sure."

"Because you can come back downstairs from me. I'll keep the apartment empty. I'll put Gladys in it."

"Jo."

"I'm just saying you have options."

"I know I do," I said. "That's why it's easy."

She put the lamps down and hugged me in the doorway so hard my glasses went sideways.

On Sunday, my mother came for dinner.

She brought a tuna casserole in a dish with her name on masking tape.

Fitz met her at the green door and carried it up all three flights.

"Mrs. Archer."

"Mr. Mahaffey."

"Why did the scarecrow win an award?"

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