We’d gotten stuck, at around one A.M., in the middle of nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere, but close to a town called You Bet, which we both bet was probably not worth stopping in. Aidan was too tired to drive and we were down to our last few dollars.So we broke into a pool house. By “pool house,” I mean a house for an indoor pool. The place was on a Mediterranean-style estate that had to be over a hundred acres, and it was so far from the main residence that it almost didn’t matter whether the owners were home or not. (For the record, they didn’t seem to be.) Inside, the air was humid and smelled like chlorine, but there were padded lounge chairs, which were cozy enough, and the suspended stillness and the sequins of light reflecting off the water were soothing.Still, I hadn’t gotten much sleep. I was too worked up about Aidan. I watched him doze soundly on the chair next to me as I cycled through waves of anger, disappointment, and loneliness—then just plain jealousy that he’d managed to set off for dreamland while I was still stranded on the shoreline of bitterness.
