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I smiled at her.

“We need to stop having wildlife encounters,” she said.

“Woofarine would have chased that deer off.”

“Woofarine definitely would have chased that deer off. He would have come back dragging one of its body parts. Or as their leader.”

I grinned at the menu.

“I won’t tell Mike,” she said.

My eyes shot up. I immediately went to the semi-confession I’d made earlier in the car.

“That you’re scared of deer,” she said. “I don’t want him to make fun of you.”

I relaxed again.

I should have never said that. The part about me thinking she was pretty and the part about me wanting to drive her home that day. Why the heck did I mention it?

She thought I was a good person.

I wasn’t. Or maybe I was a good person who wanted something bad. Because I did.

I liked her in a way I shouldn’t. I don’t know at what point tonight I realized it—or came to terms with it—but I had.

I would never act on it. Ever. Nobody would ever know but me. I’d deal with it and hopefully with time, the feeling would go away.

Hopefully.

We ordered. We ate and laughed about the deer and Woofarine and then I paid and took her home. Walked her to her door because it was almost 3:00 a.m., and I thought about how she looked like an angel when the soft light of the porch lamp lit her beautiful face before she went inside. How the absence of her in the car felt like a void on the way home, how her perfume lingered where she’d sat. I had the strongest urge to text her good night. Make plans with her tomorrow.

I didn’t. I lay in bed instead, staring at the ceiling.

Tonight was by far the best date I’d ever been on. Every time I spent time alone with her, it was the best date I’d ever been on.

But this wasn’t a date. She could never be a date.

This was my best friend’s girlfriend.

27

LARISSA

When i let myself in, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table counting her tips. Phil was asleep, thank God. I could hear him snoring all the way from here. Woofarine jumped up from the sofa when he saw me and hopped at my feet until I picked him up.

“Oh, hey, hon, you just getting in?” Mom said, starting a new pile for the fives. “Thought you were in your room, sleepin’.”

I plopped into the chair across from her and set my purse down on the floor.

“You have a good time with Mike?” she asked.

“Honestly, I barely saw him all night. I was with Chris.”

She paused over her stack.

“Mike got drunk and Chris gave me a ride home,” I explained.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning…”