What was Liam doing at that very moment? Was he eating Indian food and watching JB docs with some other girl? I had to stop thinking about him. It’s strange how certain people who are clearly no good for you can have such a powerful hold. Later on, I would ask myself the same questions about Henry and Claudine. What was it about her? Why was he so hung up? Because by the time I met them, it seemed that any trace of what brought them together initially was gone. Which is depressing. I guess that’s just the nature of love. It doesn’t make sense. You can never explain it. That’s why, of all those millions and millions of tracks on Spotify, probably more than half are about romance and heartbreak and desire. Writing songs about that stuff is the closest anyone can come to figuring it out.

We started making our way up a private drive. As we drove, every few feet on either side of the road were flickering gas lanterns leading us. It almost felt like we were driving up to some sort of bizarro winter finale of The Bachelor.

I felt the house before I saw it. Could feel its presence. Ever since I started seeing my Transcendental Meditation guru a few months earlier, I had been more in tune with auras and celestial vibrations. And I have to admit, the house was putting off some wild energy. It loomed on the mountain above, hard to make out at first, then an outline of a fortress. Wood and stone and glass, the largest picture windows I’d ever seen. It was magnificent, but it definitely made me feel a little uneasy. I should’ve listened more to that instinct. I should’ve told the driver to turn around and take me back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night snuggling with Pip in bed and ordering room service. But I just chalked up that nervousness to how I usually feel when I’m about to meet total strangers, and how weird and awkward they usually get. It was too late, I was all in.