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Us.

I liked that word so much. Even if it didn’t mean what I wished it did.

Two hours later we were parked in front of a Toilet King billboard eating tacos from a food truck in a hardware store parking lot.

“Admit it, you’re impressed,” she said, smiling while she took a sip of her soda.

“I vastly underestimated your upper-body strength.”

She’d grabbed six hundred dollars’ worth of books. In two minutes.

Contrary to how much I’d been spending lately, I did not actually have a bottomless bank account. I made decent money and thanks to my parents I didn’t have student loans. I did have a mortgage though and a car payment and other bills.

Mom had left me a small inheritance when she died. That’s what I was currently using for Larissa’s startup expenses and the haul. It was worth it.

Mom would have loved the money going to this.

Sometimes when I let myself focus on other things, when I got distracted like I did when I was with Larissa, I forgot that Mom wasn’t here. It felt like I could pick up the phone and call her. Tell her about Larissa.

Tell her about Mike.

What would she think of all this?

Mom used to always say that most of us live normal, unremarkable lives for most of our lives. It’s in those rare small moments when we’re called to action that define us. What would she say about what was happening between me and Mike? Or about what I was doing for Larissa. Was I a good person or a bad one? Good for doing what was right for Larissa. Bad for feeling the way I do, even if the only thing I did with that was make her life better.

But even the good I did for Larissa didn’t entirely outweigh the bad. Because if it wasn’t for the way I felt after the way he’d treated her, I’d still be friends with Mike. And I don’t think that made his life better.

Who really knows what’s the best or worst thing you’ve ever done? Because you’re not always there to see how big the ripple gets.

Sometimes some small decision, some little unkindness could be the tiny stone to break the dam in someone’s soul, causing the flood that drowns them. I didn’t ever want to be the reason for someone’s flood. I didn’t want to drown Mike. But it was getting harder and harder with every day I spent with Larissa to not feel like I wasn’t drowning myself trying to honor what I felt was right by him.

If not for Mike, I would have kissed her a hundred times by now. Asked her on a thousand dates.

I wished there were a world where nobody existed but us. Where nobody could be hurt by anything we did.

Larissa nodded to the tree line by the parking lot. “Deer.”

I locked the doors and she laughed.

“You are too much,” she said, taking a bite of her taco.

“Still?” I said, looking back and forth between her and the window. “After the near-death experience last year?”

“All animals are protective of their babies,” she said.

“I’d rather meet a bear in the woods,” I said, putting my straw to my mouth.

“Ha. We should do that walk again, but with supplies this time.”

“No grape blood water?” I asked.

“Maybe a little? Just for tradition?”

I chuckled.

“How was work today?” Larissa asked in between bites.

“I had a lady come in looking for Imodium. She said she had to poop so bad on the way over she put on the hazards because she didn’t know what else to do.”