Page 54 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
Are we?I think. The room is growing dark, the planes of Miller’s face soft and shadowed in the muted light from the window in the door. I sigh, sitting up to rest my arms against the bed, and look at him.
“Should we stop it?” I let the words hang there, my own undoing. “MASH?”
Miller’s eyebrows draw together. He shifts against the pillows like he’s trying to get a better look at me. “Why would we do that?”
“Miller,” I say, breathing a laugh. I gesture toward him. “Look at you. It’s getting out of control.”
“This was an accident,” he says. I look at his fingers, hidden at the top knuckle by his cast. Think of his mother, thanking me for making something that could give Miller the future she can’t. “It doesn’t mean we should stop.”
I tilt my head from side to side. Firmly, he says, “Itdoesn’t.Ro, this is your dream.”
“I’ll have other ideas,” I say, though I’m not sure I actually believe it. “Different dreams.”
Miller stares at me, his eyes moving back and forth over mine. Like he’s reading, which I know he is. “It’s like Jazz told us,” he says. “We’re not the bad guys just because someone used MASH as an excuse to break up. If you get this funding, you’re set. Youdon’t have to go to school. It’s only a couple more months.”
“And you get your tuition money,” I say quietly.
Miller blinks, glancing across the room before his gaze comes back to mine. “Yeah,” he says, sheepish. “That too.”
“Your mom told me about community college, and how there isn’t a Classics program, and your dad not wanting you to have debt.”
We look at each other, and then Miller turns his gaze up to the ceiling. “I mean, he wants that. But it’s my life, and I’d rather have debt than spend my time on something I don’t care about.”
“So you’d have gone to Brown anyway?” It’s too clear in my voice, how much I want it to be true. How much I hate that I’m holding his future in my hands, mine to fuck up. “Even without the Celeritas money?”
He turns his chin, finds my eyes. “I’d have tried to, if they accepted me.”
“They’ll accept you,” I say, so quickly that he smiles.
I draw a breath, tracing a crease in the sheet with my thumbnail. “There’s something else, though.”
He shifts, still watching me. “Okay.”
“Something’s wrong with my algorithm. I realized it on the plane.” I hesitate, fighting the urge to hide my face. “Our kids.”
There’s a short, weighted silence—heavy as humidity. Miller clears his throat. “What about our kids?”
“MASH gave me zero, but it gave you two.”
“Maybe I’ll have an affair.”
I smack his good arm and he laughs, low and breathy.
“I’m serious,” I say. “We got the same city, but I don’t know if that’s always true for matches, either. The survey doesn’t listen to both sides—it doesn’t take what I want, and what you want, and compromise them into what our life will be. It just gives me my perfect future, and you yours.” I draw a shaky breath. “But it’ll be shared. So either one of our predictions is wrong, or they both are.”
It’s there between us, half-spoken: our shared future. But I’m only talking about it in the context of this algorithm, not in the real way that’s pressing against my ribs—the way I’m imagining it, that I’m too scared to speak of out loud.
“So what do we do?” Miller asks.
“I don’t know. I’ve been so caught up in all this that I didn’t even stop to think—I just—” My voice hitches, and I struggle to smooth it out. “I didn’t want to question it. And I made MASH with Vera, who was so smart, and now I don’t know how to fix it without her. I don’t think I can.”
“I think you can,” Miller says. “I think it’s been a really long day, and you’re in your head about it, and once we’re home we can sit down and figure it out. Okay?”
I look at him—head on the pillow, hair a mess, split lip and long eyelashes and all the rest. Reassuring me, when he’s the one in the half-body cast. Something swells inside me, so staggering I nearly reach for him before I catch myself.
“Okay,” I tell him, and he smiles.
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