"Why are you in such a hurry to get out? I think you should enjoy this while it lasts."
"You want me to be paying these loans till I'm eighty?"
"I'm just saying. Once you're out, no more student discounts at the Apple store."
"The student discount at the bookstore today saved me like $20 on a $200 textbook. Bullshit," I complained.
"Textbook? You already went shopping?"
"Just before I came here."
"You didn't wait for me so we could go together?"
"You didn't warn me that I would have to have dinner with my ex after a year of not seeing each other last Saturday, so how about we call it even?" She paused for a second, looking kind of sheepish.
"You're really upset about that, huh?"
"A heads-up would have been nice, that's all I'm saying."
"But would you have gone if I had told you your date was with Roman?" she asked. I thought about it.
"No. I probably wouldn't have gone out for a dinner date with my ex. Met him for coffee at 4 p.m.? Maybe. Had lunch with the two of you and your dad here? Maybe that, too. A date? No. He stopped being that person to me a year ago."
"I'm sorry. I know it wasn't my place."
"You're right, it wasn't."
"Can you stop being mad now?"
"Depends on whether lunch is on you today," I said, smirking.
"Only if you come to the store with me to get my books first," she said, smiling back. I agreed.
The Roman thing was definitely something I wish I had never had to do and something I didn't want to deal with now, but I hadn't seen him since that night. Besides the box at my door, I hadn't heard from him, either. There was enough distance between us still for me to not be mad anymore. As long as she wasn't encouraging him behind my back, I couldn't hold it against her.
A couple hours later, I was scanning a shelf of books with scary-sounding titles. Tiffany was in school for Economics, and I knew nothing about what that meant.
"Can you see it?" she asked. We were looking for The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy by Richard Posner, an additional recommended book on her list; not part of her required reading, but she wanted to get it anyway.
"You could probably check the library for it before spending money," I suggested.
"Got it," she said, pulling the book off the shelf. I wandered through the shelves a little more as she paid for her books. One with a photograph of a red and black bird on the cover caught my eye. I picked it up.
"Birds of the American Southwest," Tiffany read over my shoulder as she came up to me. "When did you pick up birdwatching?"
"Have you ever wanted to go?" I asked her.
"Where? Birdwatching?"
"No. Arizona, New Mexico?"
"Not really," she quipped. "Maybe a little further south to Cabo and then we're talking. Are you getting that?"
"Might come in handy on my road trip."
"You are not doing a road trip to New Mexico on your own. I won't let you."
"If you won't go with me, who the hell am I supposed to take?"