Either way, it meant nothing.

And as I looked into her eyes, somehow on the other side of the room despite my failure to remember the movements that brought me across from her as opposed to beside her, I knew it was time for us to separate. Using an enemy as a security blanket wasn’t the strategy I was hoping for, after all.

“I’m leaving,” I say, reaching for my overnight bag.

“You slap me and then you leave?”

“I can’t wait any longer. It’s making me crazy.”

“Obviously.”

“You know, Kyla, it’s getting really hard to tell if you’re sincere or not. And the truth is, I don’t want to know. Because more than anything I want to believe that there’s some good left in this…in all of this. Some hope. So I’m going to leave before you ruin that for me. Thanks for the information. Get someone to help you with the rope.”

I left her there. She didn’t even say anything, simply nodded as the tears streamed. She looked very much the way I found her in Arizona.

Full circle, indeed.

I had lunch in a diner, basked in its quaintness and promise of normalcy for hours too long. The waitress had lines in her face that spoke to me like the final destination in the atlas of life. Driving recklessly and off-course to arrive at the very same place, but with more knowledge of the road. Her voice was soft but demanding, and I knew that I wasn’t the only one who had suffered. I shared suffering with the very best and the very worst and those who tried and those who let things happen. But we all reached the same point, whether we liked it or not.

I needed another night.

But it couldn’t be spent in a hotel. They reminded me of Kyla, and that was a leg of the journey that I needed to forget. Falling asleep and waking to an image of someone bound and in your presence with no will of their own made a person feel crazy.

Had Ashley felt crazy? Had the deception touched her at all?

I had a tent. I paid five dollars for a gas station sandwich and a coffee and searched the sides of the highway for an ideal camping spot for the night. I needed peace. I needed to remember myself in the day before I confronted a part of my past. I needed to ask the right questions, and prepare to hear answers that couldn’t possibly please me.

I thought long and hard under the stars, and when compared to the endless expanse of the dark but clear sky, everything else seemed so very small. What was she compared to nature? Who was she compared to my nature?

Tomorrow, when we finally came face-to-face, more than anything else, I had to remember who I was. Because at the risk of losing myself completely, who she was didn’t seem to matter and what she had done was a star in a sky of stars that could never be counted.

I was ready.