Favorite Result

Colm and I share one bathroom, and we both have 8:30 classes. The first shower is hotter than the second one, and that is the whole problem. By the second week we were arguing about it every single morning.

So we made a rule. Every night, one of us flips a coin in an app on Colm's phone. Heads, he showers first. Tails, I do.

“It's fair,” he said when we agreed on it. “A phone can't take sides.”

For eight days I got heads. Eight. On the ninth morning I was standing in the hall in my towel again, listening to him sing.

“Why are you smiling?” I said, when he finally came out.

“I'm not smiling.”

“This app is broken.”

“It's a coin,” he said. “It doesn't remember yesterday.”

“Then let me flip it tonight.”

He was holding his phone a little too tightly. “You can flip it on yours,” he said. “Same app.”

So I downloaded it. It's free, it's ugly, and at the bottom of the settings there's a small switch called Favorite result.

Colm was already in the kitchen, standing very close to the toaster, extremely interested in toast.

“It's a setting,” he called. “It's not cheating if the app gives you a setting.”

We have a new rule now. I hold the phone.