God knows I loved her. She was my best friend and weren’t best friends supposed to make the best couples? I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard of a pair of old folks celebrating some incredible anniversary—you know, they’ve been together for fifty years, sixty years—and when they’re asked how it lasted so long, as often as not, the answer was that they’re each other’s best friend.

So we’ve got that totally going for us.

But I’ve never been able to hold a relationship together, and neither has Jilly. So what happens if we break up? Do I lose my best friend?

I can’t imagine a life without Jilly in it.

I know we’ve drifted apart these past few years—we used to see each other every day. We did that for years. Years. And if for some reason we weren’t in the same city—like when I moved to L.A. with Tanya—we’d write. There’d be phone calls.

Granted, it hadn’t been quite the same since she had the accident and I got back. But the thing was, even these days, whenever we did get together, there was never any awkwardness. We’d just fall back into our old comfortable ways with each other as though nothing had ever changed.

That wasn’t any big surprise, because inside each of us, nothing had changed. We still cared for each other.

But now we were going to make a change, and the truth was, it scared the crap out of me.

I sighed and turned to look at the spot where she’d disappeared.

After awhile, I got up and wandered down the trail that Honey had taken, collecting bits of wood and lengths of dried up cactus. It was going to get dark soon and we’d probably want a fire.

I managed to kill a half-hour with that and had a good pile gathered by the time the sun went down. Then I realized I didn’t have either a lighter or matches to get a fire started. Hopefully Timony could work some of his magic.

But it wasn’t as dark as I’d expected it to be. Back home, if you were anywhere beyond the city’s light pollution, you could have trouble seeing past the length of your arm. Unless there was a moon.

There was no moon here—at least not yet—but the stars were peculiarly bright and cast a cool light by which I couldn’t have read, but I could still see well enough to get around. I could even make out the petroglyphs.