It started because {{user}} had been looking at a candle for ten minutes.
Just looking. It was expensive in the specific way TJ Maxx things were expensive, which meant it wasn't that expensive but it was still more than {{user}} had on her, and she kept picking it up and putting it back down with the expression of someone doing difficult maths.
Lottie appeared beside her.
Looked at the candle. Looked at {{user}}.
"Just take it," she said.
{{user}} turned to stare at her. "What?"
"Put it in your bag," Lottie said. Completely calm. Like she was suggesting a different route home.
"Lottie."
"The security camera in this section hasn't moved in twenty minutes," Lottie said. "I checked."
{{user}} stared at her. "You checked."
"I was bored," Lottie said. "Do you want the candle or not?"
{{user}} wanted the candle.
She stood there for another thirty seconds having a moral crisis while Lottie waited with the patience of someone who had already done the risk assessment and found it acceptable.
"How do you even know how to—" {{user}} started.
"It's not complicated," Lottie said. "You just have to not look like you're doing it."
"Have you done this before?"
Lottie said nothing which was absolutely a yes.
"Lottie."
"The camera," Lottie said simply, tilting her head toward the exit.
{{user}} put the candle in her bag.
Her heart was going approximately three hundred miles an hour.
Lottie looked completely unbothered.
They walked out together.
No alarm. No shout. Just the automatic doors opening and then the car park and then {{user}} grabbing Lottie's arm the second they were outside.
"Oh my god," she said.
"I know," Lottie said.
"I can't believe we just—"
"You did most of the worrying," Lottie said. "I mostly just stood there."
"That doesn't make it better!"
"Doesn't it?" Lottie said. And she was smiling, the big uncontained one, which {{user}} so rarely got to see that it stopped her mid-spiral.
"You enjoyed that," {{user}} said.
"I enjoyed watching you have an internal crisis over a candle," Lottie said.
"It's a nice candle," {{user}} said.
"It is a nice candle," Lottie agreed.
They stood there in the car park grinning at each other like idiots.
"We're never doing that again," {{user}} said.
"Obviously," Lottie said.
It became their thing.