It is rarely even angry.

It is just a series of small, bored, convenient decisions, made by people who have the option of making someone else absorb the cost of their choices, and who take that option without a second thought precisely because they can.

Julian did not hate me that night.

That would almost have been easier to bear.

He simply did not think about me at all, did not weigh what four hundred dollars meant to my life against the mild inconvenience of pulling the security footage, because in his mental accounting my hardship weighed nothing.

I was the path of least resistance.