“Hurry,” I whisper-yell. Blake’s taking too long. How long is too long to steal trash? I don’t know, but this feels like it. People in the houses around us are probably looking out their windows, wondering what in the hell we’re doing and calling Jeff right now.

We’re going to get arrested. I know it.

But then Blake is running to the back of the car with two white bags and I hear a thud as the trunk closes. He hops in, and we take off like felons on the run from The Man. Well, no.

He puts it in drive and goes a respectable thirty miles an hour, easy as you please and acting like sugar wouldn’t melt on his tongue, he’s so sweet. But my heart is racing like we’re going one hundred and twenty around the track at Daytona with high octane in my blood.

“Oh, my God, we did it!” I shout, clapping my hands.

Blake chuckles. “Yeah, we did.” The air quotes are heavy on the ‘we’.

“Hey, I hit the button like you said. Fair warning, though, if we got caught, I was absolutely going to say it was all your idea.”

He nods like that’s to be expected. “Open the glovebox for me, would you?” I open it to find a perfectly organized set up with tissues, a tire gauge, the car’s owner manual, and antibacterial wipes. “Hand me a wipe, please?”

I pull out the plastic package, opening the flap on the top, and hand him a wipe, which he uses to clean his hands before putting it in the backseat behind me.

At my confused look, he explains. “Trash can in the back.”

I spin in my seat to see a tiny reusable plastic bag attached to the passenger seatback with a few tissues inside, and now a wet wipe on top. “Of course you have a trash bag in your car.”

“What do you put your trash in?” His eyebrows are curled in confusion as if I just told him people in my neighborhood cut up their trash and eat it for breakfast or something.

“The floorboard, like normal people,” I explain. “And then you clean it all out when you wash the car.”

“The floorboard? That’s animalistic,” he declares.

I fight my grin, knowing I’ve tossed a few tissues and fast food wrappers onto my floorboard in my time. “I don’t know if I can date someone who doesn’t use extra fast food napkins as tissues in the car. You might be too fancy for a girl like me.”

He’s too everything for a girl like me. Tissues versus napkins are the least of it.