Finley quits her job, starts nursing school, and writes a list. Alex makes one of his own.

August: The List

My last day at Beans to Go is the Thursday before I start nursing school, which feels anticlimactic given it’s the end of an era.

I’d imagined it would feel momentous—a turning point, one door closing and another opening, all the things people say when they’re trying to make change sound brave instead of terrifying. Instead, I’m standing behind the same counter I’ve stood behind for three years, making lattes, just like I have a thousand times, and the only thing that’s different is the lump in my throat. Oh, and I’m a lot faster than I was my first few weeks.

My boss, Maggie, has been suspiciously quiet all morning. No jokes. No commentary on the customers. During a down time in the afternoon, she keeps adjusting things that don’t need adjusting—the napkin dispensers, the pastry display, the already-straight stack of cups by the register.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the counter,” I say.

She stops wiping, then looks at me, her eyes shining.

“Oh no,” I say. “Maggie, don’t you dare cry or I’ll start crying too.”

“I’m not crying,” she says defensively, swiping at her right eye. “Besides, I’ve seen you sniffling.”

I can’t deny it.

A warm smile spreads across her face. “I’m crazy proud of you, but this place is going to be a disaster without you.”

Bethany doesn’t even try to hold it together. She started crying during the noon rush and doesn’t stop until close. Two customers who aren’t regulars ask if she’s okay. She tells them, “Our best barista is going to be a nurse and I’m fine,” which makes them even more confused.

Our regulars all know I’m leaving and they wish me well. Maggie set up a gift card tree and before my shift is over, it’s stuffed with gift cards to Target, Walmart, and several grocery stores. When Alex comes down for his morning coffee, he’s wearing a cheesy smile when he clips a $200 Target gift card to the tree. “I’m just a customer adding to the tree.”

I grin through my tears. I’m going to miss seeing him every morning. And we both know it took a ton of restraint to keep him from clipping a much larger gift card.

At three o’clock, Maggie hands me a card signed by everyone—including more regulars than I can count and the FedEx driver who comes in every Tuesday—and a gift card from her and Bethany to the bookstore. “For textbooks,” she says. “Or trashy novels. Whatever gets you through.”

I hug her, then I hug Bethany, who’s crying again. I take off my apron for the last time, fold it neatly on the counter, and walk out through the lobby of the building where Alex works twenty-eight floors above me.

I consider going up to him, just to get a hug, but my eyes are red and puffy, and I’ll see him later anyway. I make it to my car before the tears come. Nursing school has been my dream since my mother got sick, but I’m gonna miss Maggie and Bethany terribly.

I take a moment and let it sink in that I’m not a barista anymore. Starting Monday, I’m a nursing student. Full time. For real.

I’m also, as of right now, making about half of what I need to survive.

***

The spreadsheet is mocking me.

I’ve been sitting at my kitchen table for two hours, staring at a budget I’ve rebuilt four times, and no matter how I move the numbers around, they don’t work. Scholarship covers tuition. Phlebotomy shifts cover some of the bills—electric, phone, car insurance. But rent alone takes nearly everything I earn in a month, and once I add groceries and gas, I’m short. Not a little short. Dangerously short.

Maybelle is sitting on the table next to my laptop, watching the numbers like she has opinions about my debt-to-income ratio.

“Don’t judge me,” I tell her. “You eat for free.”

She blinks. Judgment sustained.

The voice in my head isn’t my mom’s today. It’s the other one—the one that sounds like every collection agency that called when I was eighteen, the one that whispers you can’t afford this and who do you think you are and people like you don’t get to do things like this.

I close the laptop. Open it again. Close it. The numbers haven’t changed. They’re not going to change.

Nursing school starts in four days, and next month, I won’t be able to pay my rent.

***

Alex finds me at the kitchen table that night. He lets himself in with the key my neighbor Barb gave him months ago. He’s carrying Thai food from the place on Clairmont, because he knows when I need it. Somehow, he always knows.

He sets the bag on the counter, looks at my face, looks at the laptop, and sits down across from me without asking what’s wrong. He already knows that too.

“How bad?” he asks.

“Bad enough that I’ve done the math four times hoping it would change.” I rub my eyes. “The phlebotomy shifts cover some of it. But rent takes almost everything, and once school starts, I can’t pick up extra hours. The program is full-time. Like, full-time-full-time.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Not the uncomfortable quiet of someone who doesn’t know what to say. The deliberate quiet of someone who’s been thinking about this for longer than tonight.

“I have an idea,” he says carefully. “And I need you to hear all of it before you react.”

I narrow my eyes. “That’s a terrifying way to start a sentence.”

“Move in with me.”

The kitchen goes very still. Even Maybelle stops chewing whatever she’s found on the floor.

“Alex—”

“Hear all of it.” He holds up a hand. “Not my apartment. I know my place is—” he searches for the word, “—not where you’re comfortable. Which is why we end up here every night, on your couch, with your shower that loses hot water after six minutes and Barb’s TV coming through the wall.”

“I like Barb’s TV.”

“I know you do. And I—” He takes a breath. “I like being here too. That’s my point. We’re already spending every night together. We’re already doing this. I’m just saying we make it official, and we find a place that’s ours. Not mine. Not yours. Somewhere in between. Smaller than my condo but with better plumbing than yours. You pay what you can toward rent.”

My throat is tight. Not because it’s a bad idea. Because it’s a good one. And good ideas that involve money and Alex King have historically been where I spiral.

“You’d give up your condo?” I say. “Your view-of-the-city, doorman condo.”

“Finley.” He leans forward. “I don’t care about the condo. I care about you studying for exams at two in the morning and worrying about rent instead of focusing on school. I care about us already living together in every way except the lease. And I care about finding something that’s actually ours, instead of me camping out in your studio or you feeling like a guest in my place.”

Maybelle jumps onto the table and walks directly across my laptop keyboard, which feels like a vote.

***

I end up at Barb’s. Obviously.

Alex is still at my place, giving me space, which is another thing he’s gotten better at. Six months ago, he would have followed me. Now he texts take your time and starts unpacking the Thai food.

Barb and Mirna are both in Barb’s living room, just like most evenings. Barb’s watching a telenovela, while Mirna is reading a mystery novel. The scowl on her face tells me she already knows who did it.

“He asked me to move in with him,” I say from the doorway.

Barb mutes the TV so fast I hear the remote crack.

“Finally,” she says.

“Barb.”

“What? You two have been playing house for months. The boy sleeps here five nights a week. My electric bill has gone up from the hot water usage alone.” She waves a hand. “You love him, he loves you, and your shower is an insult to plumbing. Say yes.”

Mirna sets down her book. “Is this what you want, or is this what the budget wants?”

Leave it to Mirna to find the exact nerve and press on it.

“Both,” I admit. “That’s what scares me. I can’t tell if I’m choosing this or if the money is choosing it for me.”

“Would you want to live with him if money wasn’t an issue?” Mirna asks.

I don’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“Then the money isn’t the reason. It’s the timing.” She picks her book back up. “Sometimes things happen at the right time for the wrong reason and the wrong time for the right reason. This might be both. That doesn’t make it a mistake.”

Barb points at Mirna. “That. What she said. Also, you’re not getting younger.”

“I’m twenty-four.”

“And I was married at twenty-two. Twice.”

“That’s not the endorsement you think it is, Barb.”

She grins. “Third time was the charm. God rest his soul.”

I sit on Barb’s couch and let the truth settle. I want this. I want to live with Alex. Not because I can’t afford to live on my own, but because I’m tired of saying goodbye at the door in the morning when we both know he’s coming back that night. Because I want his jacket on the wobbly kitchen chair to be permanent. Because I want to build something more permanent with him.

And yes—because the math doesn’t work otherwise. But Mirna’s right. The money is the timing, not the reason.

I look at them. My two neighbors. My family. The women who have fed me and scolded me and kept me sane for four years.

“I’m going to miss living next door to you,” I say, and my voice breaks on the last word.

Barb reaches over and takes my hand. “Honey. You’re not moving to Mars. You’re moving in with your boyfriend. I expect you to visit every Sunday, and I expect him to bring food.”

“And call or text us,” Mirna adds. “Every day.”

“Every day,” I promise, and I mean it so fiercely it hurts.

***

I go back to my apartment. Alex is on the couch with Maybelle in his lap and two containers of pad see ew on the coffee table. He looks up when I come in but doesn’t ask. He just waits.

“Okay,” I say. “But I have conditions.”

He sits up straighter. “Conditions.”

“My name on the lease. I pay my share—whatever I can with the phlebotomy shifts. We find the place together. And no—”

“No secret payments, no sneaking the check, no buying furniture without asking.” He’s almost smiling. “I know the rules, Finley. You’ve trained me.”

I laugh. It feels like I’m exhaling for the first time in a week.

We eat the Thai food while we look at apartments on his phone, shoulders touching on my tiny couch, Maybelle wedged between us like a furry chaperone. And at some point during the evening—maybe after the second listing that makes us both laugh because the bathroom is in the kitchen—I pick up my phone and start typing.

A list. A stupid, jokey list that I text him even though he’s sitting right next to me.

BOYFRIEND DUTIES v2.0 (Nursing School Edition)

He looks at his phone, then give me a dry look. “You’re texting me from two feet away.”

“Just read it.”

1. Don’t let me quit on hard days.

2. Quiz me on flashcards even when you’re bored.

3. Learn to cook at least three meals that aren’t Thai takeout.

He snorts. “I can cook.”

“Toast doesn’t count.”

“The toaster is broken.”

“Keep reading.”

4. Don’t try to fix what I didn’t ask you to fix.

5. Talk me down when I’m sure I’m too dumb for this.

6. Let me pay my share, even when it’s not equal.

He’s not laughing anymore. He’s reading the way he reads things that matter—slowly, like he’s committing each word to memory.

7. Remind me this was my choice on the days it doesn’t feel like one.

8. Stay.

He stares at the last one for a long time. Then he sets his phone down, turns to me, and says, “I can do all of this.”

Not I’ll try. Not I’ll do my best. I can do all of this. Like it’s already decided. Like the question was never whether he would, only when I’d ask.

I lean my head against his shoulder. “We’re really doing this.”

“We’re really doing this.”

***

Three weeks later, we’re in our apartment—a one-bedroom on the second floor of a building that’s not fancy and not falling apart, with a kitchen big enough for two people and a shower with reliable hot water and a fire escape that Maybelle has already claimed as her personal balcony.

Nursing school is everything they warned me it would be and several things they didn’t. The coursework is a firehose. The clinical rotations haven’t started yet, but the simulations alone are enough to make me question every life choice I’ve ever made. My classmates are smart and tired and running on caffeine and stubbornness, and I fit right in.

It’s 2 AM on a Tuesday and I can’t sleep. I’m sitting at the kitchen table—our kitchen table, which we found at a secondhand store. It wobbles slightly less than my old one, and my notes spread out and my laptop open and the quiet, creeping certainty that I am in over my head.

I pick up my phone and type a text to Alex, who is asleep fifteen feet away in our bed.

What if I can’t do this?

I don’t send it. I stare at it. My thumb hovers over the arrow. Sending it feels like admitting something I’m not ready to admit—that the girl who handled medical bills at eighteen and worked two jobs and clawed her way into nursing school might not be strong enough for the thing she clawed her way into.

I delete the text. Set the phone down.

Two minutes later, Alex appears in the kitchen doorway. Hair wrecked. T-shirt inside out. Eyes half-open.

“You’re up,” he says. Not a question.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. The bed was wrong.” He rubs his eye. “It’s wrong when you’re not in it.”

He doesn’t ask why I’m up. He looks at the table—the notes, the laptop, the cold cup of coffee I forgot I made—and he goes to the counter. I hear the quiet sounds of him moving through the kitchen: the fridge opening, a drawer sliding, the click of the kettle.

He comes back with a fresh cup of tea and a sleeve of crackers and sits down across from me. Then he reaches across the table and picks up my flashcards.

“Quiz time?” he says, like it’s a perfectly normal thing to do at 2 AM on a Tuesday.

My eyes sting. “Alex, you have a meeting at eight.”

“And you have an exam at nine.” He shuffles the cards. “So let’s make sure you’re ready.”

He squints at the first card. “‘Describe the stages of wound healing.’” He looks up. “You people memorize this stuff?”

“Hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, remodeling,” I say automatically, and the fact that I know it—that it comes out of my mouth without thinking—makes something loosen in my chest.

Maybe I can do this.

He flips to the next card. And the next. And the next. He mispronounces half the medical terms and makes me laugh correcting him, and the kitchen is warm and quiet and ours, and at some point Maybelle wanders in from the fire escape and sits on the table between us like a tiny, furry proctor.

We go through the whole stack. When we’re done, he reaches across the table and takes my hand.

“You can do this,” he says. Not because I asked him to say it. Because he’s been watching me answer every question right for the last forty minutes, and he believes it.

“Boyfriend Duty number five,” I whisper. “Talk me down when I’m sure I’m too dumb for this.”

“I’m working the list.”

***

I wake up on the couch. I don’t remember falling asleep—the last thing I remember is Alex quizzing me on pharmacology terms while I was curled up against his side—but he covered me with the blanket from our bed and put a pillow under my head.

The apartment is quiet. Maybelle is on my feet. Early light is coming through the window, and the kitchen table has been cleared—my notes stacked neatly, my laptop closed, my flashcards organized into two piles with a sticky note on top.

I get up and read it. Alex’s sharp, slanted handwriting.

BOYFRIEND DUTIES v2.0 (Alex’s Edition)

1. Show up with food. (Even if she says she’s not hungry.)

2. Don’t try to fix what she didn’t ask me to fix.

3. Learn what a sinoatrial node is. (Done. It’s the heart’s pacemaker. You’re welcome.)

4. Study the flashcards so she doesn’t have to quiz herself.

5. Let her pay her share. Even when it kills me.

6. When the bed is wrong, go find her.

7. Be the man she already thinks I am.

I stand in our kitchen, in our apartment, holding a sticky note that says everything he’s never been good at saying out loud, and I think about the man who’s been walking into a coffee shop for months, ordering an Americano every day, then asked me last December to be his fake girlfriend.

He knows it now. He knows all of it—the debt and the grief and the pride and the fear, and the way I need to be asked instead of rescued, and the way I take my tea, and which flashcards I always get wrong, and that the bed is wrong when I’m not in it.

I check my phone and see a text from Alex, sent twenty minutes ago.

You talked in your sleep last night. You said “hemostasis” three times. You’re going to crush this exam.

I laugh, then press the sticky note to the fridge with a magnet—right in the center, where I’ll see it every morning—and I go get ready for school.

Maybelle watches me from the couch, unimpressed, as always.

“We’re going to be fine,” I tell her.

And for the first time in a long time, I believe it.