I then left Grayson a handwritten note explaining that I needed to get out of town for a while, and when I’ll be back. He’ll get it in the morning, likely after returning from a forty-mile run or something equally nauseating. He never gets hangovers.

For some reason, I was compelled to wear an outfit entirely comprised of old staples I’ve had in my closet for a decade. A pair of leggings from Nordstrom that have somehow survived since early college, a sweatshirt my mom wore in the eighties, and a jean jacket I borrowed from my dad and never gave back. My closet is filled with outfits I’ve been sent from Instagrammy brands; one matching two-piece of expensive cotton fleece was even called the jetsetter. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but something has me wanting to dress like the real me.

A few hours later, I was through security, then boarding. It didn’t feel real, all going by in a tired haze.

Yet it took forever to fall asleep on the plane because the only seat I could get was a middle seat in coach between a Chatty Cathy and a guy who spent the first two hours of the flight trying to figure out the Wi-Fi in order to call a girlfriend who had dumped him and whom he was on the way to winning back. He kept asking, “Does it work for you?” And I wanted to respond morosely that nothing seemed to work for me. Instead, I just told him my Wi-Fi was also not working.

Eventually I put on my noise-canceling headphones, took half a Xanax, and managed to fall into a frequently interrupted sleep.

“Miss?”

I startle to attention now and say “Oh, thanks so much” when I see that the driver has taken out my suitcase and carry-on and put them onto the dusty road.

I scan the portable credit charger he holds out, but there’s no option for tip. I reach into my pocket for the cash I put there—euros I’d taken from the stash of international currency Grayson keeps in his closet, and which I’d never understood until I was leaving for another country on a whim—but can’t find it. “One sec,” I say, patting myself down all over. “Sorry, I—I had some cash for you—”

He says, “Don’t give it another thought. Have a good night, miss.”

“No, really, I—one sec, one sec.”

I look in the back seat to see if I dropped it, but no luck.

I rustle through my carry-on on the street, but as I do, I hear the car start up and drive off.

“Hey!” I call after him. “Do you have Venmo?”