Page 84 of Trust Me

“Thanks,” I muttered.

He just smiled before we joined Cyrus by the front window.

“So,” I started once I’d taken my seat, “no fights this week. You’ve got to have an exciting story or two, though.”

Cyrus pursed his lips while he thought about it. “Well, I saved a lady’s dog yesterday.”

“Do tell.”

“She dropped the leash and that thing tried to run into traffic. I grabbed it before it hit the curb. She gave me five bucks and said I was a superhero. I wasn’t going to argue.”

“I’ll bet you earned yourself some good karma.”

He held up his cup. “That’s what I call this.”

I pulled out my wallet and took out more than I usually gave him. “Well, I got my annual bonus at work, so we can call that karma too.”

His eyes widened when I passed the money to him. “You don’t have to . . .”

“Just promise me you’ll keep yourself fed this week, alright? And there’s a witness here to hold you to it this time.”

“I will.”

After taking it, he turned his face toward the window. In the reflection, I saw the way his brow knitted.

Looking at Dean, I chewed on my lip for a moment while I tried to decide what was in his expression. “I budgeted for the extra I’m giving everyone this week.”

“I’m not worried about it,” he replied.

“Maybe I wanted you to scold me for it.”

He chuckled around his cup as he took a drink. When he lowered it, there was a slight frown on his face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Tell me how you stay so positive.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“It’s not that you shouldn’t. I guess I just tend to be more cynical. I look around at the world and see terrible things happening in every direction. In my experience, people are just not that great. Except for you.”

“Maybe that’s because you choose to look for the negative side of things. There’s always a downside to life, but that doesn’t mean we have to let it thrive.”

“What do you mean?”

Tapping my finger on the side of my cup, I considered how to respond without coming off as some Socrates fanboy. “Sometimes, we manifest our reality. I know that sounds ridiculous, and I’m not saying that it’s all a construct of our minds. It’s just that we get to choose how we respond to what happens, and if we continuously let negativity dwell inside of our minds, we put out more of it, then the world only gets darker.”

“Let me guess. There are people who have it worse, so we should just be grateful.”

“I know it’s a hackneyed idea, but yeah. It doesn’t take away from our own struggles to admit that, and I think that if we take just a few moments out of every day to choose to acknowledge what’s going right, our lives can change.”

“Has yours changed?”

“It’s hard to know. I like to think that if I’d responded to the bad things in my life with negativity, it would have gotten a lot worse. What does that do for anyone?”

“I can’t stand you,” he grumbled.

It was impossible not to laugh. “I thought we were past that stage of our relationship.”