How to Trust Your Gut

(With Training Wheels, a Safety Harness, and Someone Else's Dead Grandmother's Watch)

Rafa hands me ten hundred-dollar bills in a Starbucks parking lot, and I’m standing there holding a thousand dollars in cash like I’ve never seen money before.

Which is stupid, because I’ve seen money before. I’ve just never seen someone I barely know actually pay back money.

“That’s a thousand,” he says. “I’ll get you the other hundred next week.”

I’m doing math—$1,100 loaned three days ago, $1,000 back now—while simultaneously trying to process the fact that this is happening. A person I’ve known for two months is paying me back. On time. Without me having to chase him down or listen to elaborate excuses about why the money’s tied up in crypto, his mom’s sick, or whatever.

“Cool,” I say, because what the fuck else do you say when your cynicism gets proven wrong?

He shrugs. “Thanks for helping me out.”

And then he leaves, and I’m sitting in my car with a thousand dollars in my lap, feeling something I haven’t felt in years.

Hope.

Fuck.

The Part Where I Learned Not to Trust Myself

I’m not going…