In The Night We Met, loyalty is not only a character trait but also a fundamental ethical principle that certain characters live by. Though Larissa’s actions are influenced by her idea of loyalty, Chris’s concept of loyalty is particularly pervasive and is one of the main issues guiding his actions until the final chapter of the novel. While Chris sees loyalty as a good quality, he sometimes fails to realize when it goes too far.

Chris’s loyalty toward his friends is apparent from the novel’s opening when he agrees to get up early to drive a near-stranger to the hospital because his best friend asked him to do so. Significantly, the very first way Chris describes Mike in the novel is “loyal to a fault” (11), showing how this trait not only runs in their friend group but also is especially important to Chris in his longest friendship. Since Chris has known Mike since childhood and Mike is equally loyal, when Chris starts to fall for Mike’s girlfriend, Chris always feels like he’s at fault and a bad person for even thinking of Larissa in that context. When Chris realizes that he’s in love with Larissa later in the novel, he asks himself, “What kind of piece of shit lets himself get there?” (197), showing how he equates his morals with his loyalty to his best friend.

However, Chris’s obsession with loyalty also proves detrimental in many ways because he often fails to see when he’s enabling or infantilizing others. This ethical complication is most evident in his dynamic with Mike and Larissa. Chris persuades himself that he needs Mike and Larissa to stay together, so he starts to do things unasked that he thinks will make Mike look better in Larissa’s eyes. He drives over at three o’clock in the morning to clean off Larissa’s car, removes products with nuts from the cabin pantry, and buys a replacement Christmas gift for Larissa at the last minute. While Chris rationalizes these choices by claiming that he’s helping Mike and taking good care of Larissa, he doesn’t realize that his interference is preventing Mike and Larissa from developing an honest dynamic. Likewise, his determination to cover up Mike’s heavy drinking means that Larissa is largely unaware of the problem until much later in the narrative, which prevents her from making an informed choice about the relationship for well over a year.

By the novel’s close, Chris has learned that loyalty must be paired with boundaries, for both his own sake and that of others. He realizes that his loyalty to Mike has prevented him from pursuing his true feelings for Larissa, while his enabling behavior helped Mike avoid facing his challenges for too long. Chris thus ends the novel with a healthier concept of loyalty, learning that he can be loyal to his friends while still leaving enough space for both himself and his friends to be autonomous and authentic.