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She shrugged. “He was happy to help. Obviously.”

My cheeks burned.

“You know, not everybody needs to know how broke we are,” I said, slamming the basket onto the carpet and clotheslining everything into it.

“How is sticking it to a multibillion-dollar company Letting Everybody Know How Broke We Are?” she said, putting the last part in quotes.

“You could have at least texted Mike,” I said, picking up my basket and stalking to my room.

“I only have Chris’s number,” she called after me. “You’re overreacting!”

I stopped and spun around. “Wait. Why do you have Chris’s number?”

“I got it from your phone. I had a question, and you were in the shower.”

“What kind of question…” I said slowly.

She shrugged. “I was constipated from the Oxy they gave me.”

I looked at her in horror. “You couldn’t google that? Mom!”

“What? He’s a pharmacist. Like he’s never gotten that text before—”

“Oh my God.” I wanted to die. “I have known him for five seconds,” I said.

“Well, you were asking him questions—”

“I was asking him if you could have a Motrin and Aleve together because we only had one of each. I wasn’t asking him about your impacted bowel.”

She shrugged again. “What’s the big deal? You don’t text your friends for help?”

“He’s not my friend!”

I threw up my hand and went to my room.

I dropped my basket in my closet, sat on my bed, put my face into my palms, and tried to breathe through the mortification.

I knew she was right—some of this was me being sensitive. But some of it was something else.

Mike and his friends were different from me and Mom and Lexi. They weren’t the kind of people we usually hung around. They were the kind of people that people like us waited on. Xavier’s a veterinarian with two practices, Jesse’s a wealth manager with a degree from Cornell, his girlfriend Becca’s a lawyer. Mike lives in the guesthouse behind Donna and Tony’s mansion in Edina. You could fit ten of my apartments into Mike’s place.

I was barely comfortable just being around them, let alone asking them for charity. Not even small things. Maybe from Mike, but definitely not from Chris, who I’d only hung out with once and who didn’t even come get the free books I was offering him. We had a polite, acquaintance-level relationship, not a Can I Use Your Streaming Service one.

Mom had no shame. So I had it for the both of us.

I looked at the message he sent, my face hot.

“Larissa, come watch TV with us. Stop actin’ ridiculous,” Mom called.

I blew a breath through my nose. Then I typed Thanks and shut my door.

5

CHRIS

Jesse and i were sitting in the parking lot in my car with my dog outside the surgical center waiting for Mike and Xavier.

Mike was getting his wisdom teeth removed. He was thirty. Jesse had been making fun of him for a week.