Editing The Night We Met (section)

==Plot==

After a night out at a concert, Larissa finds herself needing a ride home. Given the choice between two men in the same group of friends, she picks Mike — friendly, outgoing, easy to talk to — rather than his quieter, seemingly standoffish best friend Chris. That single decision sets the course of her life. Mike becomes her boyfriend. Chris becomes, over time, something she cannot quite name.

Their friendship begins accidentally. When Mike is unavailable to drive Larissa to her mother's early morning surgery, he sends Chris in his place. Spending hours together at the hospital, Larissa discovers that she and Chris have far more in common than she had assumed. A subsequent series of circumstances — including Chris adopting a stray rescue Yorkie that Larissa volunteers to walk — gives the two a recurring reason to spend time together, and a genuine friendship develops.

Larissa is financially stretched, managing several side hustles simultaneously just to cover her bills. Chris, unable to simply watch someone he cares about struggle, begins quietly working behind the scenes — suggesting to Mike thoughtful gestures and gifts that would actually help Larissa — without ever taking credit. As time passes, Chris comes to recognise that what he feels for Larissa goes well beyond friendship. But he refuses to act on it. Mike is his closest friend, and Chris is aware that Mike is privately battling struggles he has not disclosed to Larissa. Betrayal is not something Chris is capable of, even at cost to himself.

Larissa, meanwhile, finds herself increasingly unable to ignore the contrast between what she has with Mike and what she feels in Chris's company — and unable to stop wondering what her life might have looked like if she had chosen differently on the night they met.