He fixed the sheet in place under a small wooden magnet shaped like an acorn.

“I printed the final budget before I went to bed,” Ethan said.

I stepped closer to the refrigerator and adjusted my watch strap.

The numbers were laid out in neat, single-spaced columns.

His warehouse pay at twenty-two dollars an hour filled the top line, followed by our fixed monthly rent, electric bill, and internet.

Two lines down, the entry for the Toyota SUV was listed under my business account name, with the monthly loan payment of three hundred eighty dollars and the insurance payment balanced to the exact cent.

At the very bottom, a line marked emergency fund showed sixty-five dollars set aside from his first full paycheck.