Unfortunately, he still hadn’t asked for my number, or a date, or my hand in marriage, and my drink was getting low.

He told me that when we first met, he had said to a friend about me: “If I get that girl’s number I will never ask another girl for her number again.

But I tended not to date men who ever showed up for me.

We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn’t stay and that he couldn’t come with me, but still, we couldn’t let go.

I didn’t answer. We were not buddies. We could not chat about the proximity of our offices, or football, or forgiveness.

That’s how it felt – that the loss of him had a life of its own. I lived with it as I could have lived with him. Some nights it was quiet and sometimes it pounded on my door.

On day one of the drive, I saw my first dome sky. The world was so flat that I could see the level horizon all around me and the sky looked like a dome. Skies like that will give you perspective when nothing else will. The second day, a tumbleweed blew across the interstate. I’m in a western movie, I said to myself, laughing. I found it so much easier to laugh now that this weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I thought about how the past can become so small. An entire day, 24 separate, heavy hours, becomes the size of a tiny brown leaf falling from a tree. Before you know it, a whole year is just a pile of dead leaves on the ground. The year or so I’d spent in love with Chad was starting to feel so long ago, swept away by the wind. I knew that this year would soon feel far away too.

Even though I always came back, he said he was always watching me leave.