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She laughed.

“So you cook a lot?” I asked, sniffling.

“I do. It’s cheaper than eating out and easier with my allergy, less risk.”

“Have you had bad experiences at restaurants?”

“Oh yes. Very bad. I can’t even work anywhere that serves nuts,” she said. “Makes it hard to find jobs.”

God, I couldn’t imagine trying to navigate that. Food, trying to kill you.

“Speaking of restaurants that don’t serve nuts, guess what I brought for the soup,” she said.

“What?”

“The ass bread from that one place.”

“The pumpernickel?”

“Yeah. I froze all the bread when I got home. My mom won’t eat the pumpernickel, so I brought it. It’s perfect for this.”

I agreed. And I was somehow even more excited for lunch now.

“You know, you should have taken some of the bread home,” she said, talking to me but looking at her carrots. “I felt bad that you left me everything. They’re expensive.”

I shrugged over my onions. “It’s just me in the house. It was too much.”

It wasn’t. I would have loved to take some of it home, but I’d wanted her to have it. After she told me how much she was struggling, I’d wanted to help her—even if it was just bread. Hell, I would have bought her a sandwich or something to take home that day if it wouldn’t have been weird to do it. I’d settled for sending her home with five mostly uneaten loaves of bread and strong-arming Mike into paying for her car repairs instead.

As if thinking his name summoned him, Mike shouted groggily from the other room. “McNougattttt!”

Larissa tilted her head. “McNougat?”

I put my knife down and went to wash my hands. “It’s my nickname.”

“Your nickname is McNougat…” she said.

“Look, you don’t pick your own nickname.”

“The nickname picks you?” she said, clearly amused.

“Or your fucked-up friends do.” I dried my hands on a paper towel and went to see what Mike wanted.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said, walking into his room.

He was sitting against the headboard looking slightly more coherent than earlier. “My mouth is killing me…” he rasped.

“Okay.” I looked at my watch. “We can do a pain pill and some Advil.” I turned to get him a water, but Larissa was already coming in with it.

“Hey,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed with the glass.

“Awww, shit, why’d you come?” he groaned. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Oh, stop. I don’t care,” she said gently.

His face was swollen. He’d taken the gauze out of his mouth and it was sitting on the nightstand in a soggy pink wet ball. I grabbed some tissues and picked it up before she saw it.

When I came back from the bathroom, she was holding his hand.