The screen was up, but it was dark. The computer was sleeping, the way I should be sleeping. I felt the blood pounding through my veins. I pushed back the covers and swung my legs out of bed. As I walked toward the computer, I could feel its force field drawing me in. I sat down and pressed the power button and heard the familiar Mac start-up sound.

My first stop was to scan through his recent documents. Nothing new there, just some script changes for his upcoming show and a few saved e-mails from his brother back in Boston. There really wasn’t anything interesting, and it felt like a bust. I couldn’t believe I’d pulled my naked self out of bed, just to sit here with shivering nippies at ten in the morning. Not wanting to feel like a total failure, I double-clicked on his address book.

“You have 857 contacts,” it told me. The page was open to the letter R and the most recently pulled-up name was Amy Robbins.

This stopped me. I started searching my memory. Amy? Amy Robbins? Who was Amy Robbins, and where the fuck was the 404 area code? I grabbed the cordless phone on the desk and dialed Information. The line rang once before the operator picked up.

“Excuse me, but can you tell me where the 404 area code is?” I asked.

“Sure, just a moment. . . . The 404 area code is in Georgia. Would you like me to connect you to Information there?”

“No!” I snapped and, thanking her, slammed the phone down.

Dave had never mentioned an Amy. He never mentioned anything about Georgia. I started circling the ideas through my head. I knew there was something, a glimmer I could almost remember. Then it hit me. When Dave and I met for the first time at the airport, he’d been on his way to Georgia.

Staring past the computer screen, I let my own thoughts spin. Maybe when we met he’d been going to Georgia to see this Amy, a girlfriend he was serious enough with to commute across the country to see. Maybe he’d continued their relationship after we started dating. I thought of how Dave had disappeared for those couple of weeks in the beginning. Maybe he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be with me at the start. Maybe he had both things going at the same time. He could have taken me out for dinner, and then gone home and had hot phone sex with Amy.

I tried to calm myself with some deep-breathing techniques I’d seen on Oprah.