her. To say I’m confused would be the understatement of eternity.
There’s a set of two pictures of me, looking away from her, with the sun shining bright in the background. The two photos are nearly identical. Their captions are different, though. The first has the same words from her familiar love-note-inspired cocktail. I remember the night I found out that Dakota and Nora were roommates. The night began with some promise but quickly turned sour. Every detail from that moment with her floods my memory.
I’ve noticed her taking pictures of things before, but I just didn’t really think too much about it. Since Tessa has joined the world of Apple products, she’s on her phone all the time. I’m even on my phone a lot, checking scores or looking at my work schedule. There’s always something to do on the interwebs.
This entire time I’d been focusing on her not having Facebook, or lying about it in one of her many attempts to keep herself hidden from me. But now, here I am staring at an entire collage of her life. Dakota even makes an appearance a few times: she and Nora sitting cross-legged on the floor of their apartment, a board game between them, bottles of wine by their feet. And when I see the pink phone, I remember playing this game with Dakota and Carter when we were younger. It would usually be me and Carter playing while Dakota cooked dinner and their dad slept on the couch—or wasn’t home at all.
I need to move my thoughts away from that time in my life. The hole from the loss I shared with Dakota seems to steal the air from every room we’re in together. With the loss of so many people . . .
Her sorrow is in control of the room, even though she’s trying not to show it. She rustles on the bed and tugs at the fabric of her T-shirt, and I know she’s awake. She knows that I know she’s awake. She knows that I know that she knows—and so on forever.
I choose to be selfish for once and look back at the little screen instead of at her. The caption on the second picture reads: You chase the winter and I chase the summer. And, darling, the two will never meet.
A chill runs through me, and I tap out of the screen and toss the phone back onto Dakota’s bed.
A dreadful silence draws a long breath. Her voice is quiet in the dark. “Landon?”
“Yeah?”
She doesn’t turn around when she asks, “Do you love her?”
I think about my response and how it may feel for her to hear it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”
Dakota sighs from her bed. “When did you stop loving me?”
How on earth can I answer that? I don’t know if there is even an answer to her question. I’m not sure that I ever stopped loving her. I look over toward her and remember how she felt in my arms as she slept. Most importantly, is four a.m.—right after I told her I love someone else—really the time to have this conversation?
And still, I can’t hide from this forever.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever stop loving you, Dakota.”
“Stop lying.”
Her voice is harsh. Her back is turned to me. I need a moment to prepare an answer for her. I’m too tired to fight, but I need her to understand that she hasn’t been in my life for six months. Six months. That seems so much longer right now, in this hotel room with two beds and empty Starbucks cups in the trashcan. She still smells the same, and her slender body has grown into an athletic, toned figure. She works hard, and she looks incredible. It’s strange to think about the difference between her body and Nora’s—they are equally beautiful and so different; neither is better than the other. I would be the uglier of the couple with either of them. The difference, though, is that it’s deeper than their exterior—it’s the energy, the connection, the expectations from each woman.
I sound like I’m filling out an application on a dating app.
I wait a few seconds for Dakota to say something about my silence. She’s lying still, her back toward me, and the old TV doesn’t give much light to this vampire-dark hotel room. I had stepped over a used syringe in the parking lot, so maybe it’s just part of the package. When I was