No, I did not do all fifteen hours without stopping—and yes, I stayed in the same motel where Jake and I had stayed on the drive out, coincidentally, in the exact same room we’d had before. And, yes: I felt so alone against the contrast of those memories that I could barely sleep. At bedtime, I lay in Jake’s old bed, in the solid hotel-room blackness, wondering if this was what his blackness would look like, when it finally arrived. With the heavy hotel curtains closed and all the lights off, the darkness was as thick as cotton. I opened my eyes as wide as I could against it, straining for any sliver of light, but nothing changed. It made me feel closer to Jake in a way to lie there like that and imagine that I was seeing through his future eyes. It was a stupid game, but one I couldn’t stop playing, and after far too long—An hour? Two?—of waiting for sleep, the ache to talk to him finally got so strong that I fumbled around in my purse until I found my phone, found his number, and hit SEND.
