I push myself off the bed and my wince deepens at the soreness that ripples throughout my body, including in some places I didn’t even know it was possible to be sore. I’m pretty sure I’ll feel this for days, but at least that will give me something to remember him by. To prove that it really happened, that he existed, and that tonight wasn’t just some wild, fever dream.

Reality is already trying to reassert itself. Soon I’ll be back in my carefully controlled life, where nothing is ever this wild or unplanned.

I pick up my clothes from the floor and quietly get dressed, unable to stop myself from darting glances over at James. A million thoughts race through my head like speeding cars on a track, going in circles at a hundred miles an hour.

What if I woke him up? Or “accidentally” missed my flight?

I know I’m grasping at straws, trying to hold on to something that was always supposed to be fleeting, but that doesn’t make letting go any easier. I just wish I could find something, anything at all, that would give me a good excuse to spend more time with him.

James shifts in his sleep, one muscled arm reaching across the space where I was lying. Even unconscious, he seems to be searching for me, and my resolve nearly crumbles.

There’s a small pad of paper and a pen on the little table beside the bed, along with the nearly empty water bottles that we drank from to rehydrate during all of our… activities. Grabbing the pen, I lean over the little table and start to scratch out a note for him. My phone number pours out onto the page, and I’m halfway through writing my real name when my brain catches up and I freeze, the pen hovering above the pad and my heart hammering in my chest.

I can’t do this. This is crazy.

It was supposed to be one night, so let it be.

But would it really be so terrible to see him again? To explore whatever this is between us?

Yes. It would. Nothing good could come from mixing my real life with this fantasy.

But I can’t just leave him like this without saying something. I tear off the first piece of paper and crumple it, then drop it in my bag. My brain goes into overdrive trying to come up with something that isn’t too revealing but also not too vague, but I come up empty… until finally, something clicks into place and the pen starts move across the paper again.

Thank you for a night I’ll always remember, but I have to fly away.

— Hummingbird