I was buzzed when I got into October’s bed that night, and I tend to think too much when I’m buzzed. The closet door was open, and from where I lay I could see Cal’s clothes hanging on the left side, his jeans color-coordinated from dark to light, his shirts on matching mahogany hangers, and for the first time all day I felt the weight of fear and guilt like bricks on my chest.

October walked into the closet, slipped out of her dress, and got into bed facing me. To avoid thinking of Cal, I told her about the mariposa lilies in Tiburon, how rare and beautiful they are, and how I thought it would be cool to use them in a selfie when they bloomed in the spring.

And in fact, she ended up doing just that. Months after I left California, she went to Tiburon and filmed a selfie in the little field up on Ring Mountain where the lilies grow. In the clip, she’s wrapped in the camping blanket from my bed, holding an empty bottle of tequila in which she’d inserted a mariposa lily.

The clip ends with her setting the bottle in the dirt, dousing it with lighter fluid, then dropping a match and watching the little flower burn.

We’d only been in bed for a minute or so when October said, “Something’s bothering you.”

The day had been golden, and I didn’t want it to end with a conversation about Cal or my shitty self-doubt. I shook my head and said, “It’s nothing.” Then I repeated what she’d said to me earlier: “We’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”

I remember the exact expression on her face then. An openness so wide and filled with so much faith, it seemed more like blinding recklessness.

The woman believed too much in me.

She believed too much in everything.

TWENTY-ONE.

It rained the day before Cal’s show at the Greek Theater. I remember because October and I were out on the Coastal Trail at Lands End, a park set along the craggy coastline in San Francisco with stunning postcard views of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Golden Gate Bridge to the east.

We were location scouting for a selfie we intended to shoot the following week. It had been sunny when we left Mill Valley, and I hadn’t anticipated so drastic a change in the weather, but thick, spongy clouds quickly moved in; the drizzle and wind cut right through the flannel shirt I had on, and within minutes I was damp and cold.

The plan as October had explained it was for me to film her as she walked naked through the labyrinth out on Eagle’s Point. She was going to have sharp maces hanging from ropes tied around each of her wrists like macabre, medieval bracelets, dangling and slicing up her legs as she moved.

I hated the idea and tried to talk her out of it. When that didn’t work, I asked her what the motivation was.