Page 95 of The Girl with No Name

“I don’t know.” I pause. Averting my eyes, I realize she just answered it anyway. “I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy. When you started talking about that job in San Francisco, I began to wonder.”

“Give me your hand.”

A little reluctantly, I slide my hand across the table.

She looks me in the eye as she takes it. “You deserve to be happy, too. Like, unbridled, ridiculous, passionate happiness. I want that for you.”

“What’s your favorite memory of us?” I ask, realizing this could be the last time we ever talk.

She smiles faintly. “Probably just hanging out with you and your friends during the summers in college at Dunn’s house. I really love your friends—Dunn, all those guys. You?”

“Maybe that night in Argentina when you handed me my guitar and demanded I play you a song, even though I was shy.”

“I remember that. I loved that.”

I stare into Samantha’s eyes, and I feel like I did on the night I met her. She’s a stranger again. In a few years, she’ll just be someone I used to know. “We had some really good times together. What are we going to do with all those memories?” I ask.

Sam thinks for a moment, then puts her hand on my wrist and squeezes. “I think we can just let those good times be what they were—good times in the past. We’ve been growing apart for some time now. I think we’ve both sensed it. That doesn’t change what we had, though. It just means our futures don’t align. Whatwe have—what we had—ran its course. That’s okay.” She smiles, as if trying to comfort me.

At that moment, the song in the bar changes. It’s a Zach Bryan tune—“I Remember Everything.” Well, shit. If I didn’t get the hype before, I sure get it now. And I gotta be honest, he does more for me than Lady Antebellum, or whatever they call themselves now.

After another hour, I hug Samantha goodbye for the last time and watch her walk out the door of the bar.

Then I flag the bartender and request some rotgut whiskey.

I’mdead drunk as I board the plane, and thankfully I pass out for the first couple of hours. When I come to consciousness, the sun is coming up, and there’s an older woman sitting in the seat next to me. She’s got white hair, and she’s probably in her seventies.

“Wow, you were really knocked out there,” she says.

“Sorry. Was I snoring?”

“No.” She smiles. “But we hit some turbulence, and you didn’t budge.”

“Oh.”

“Do you play the piano?”

“Uh, no… Why do you ask?”

“You have long fingers. They’d be perfect for playing piano.”

“I play guitar,” I offer.

“Very nice. Are you a rock star?”

“No.” I laugh. “Not at all.”

“Well, you’re very handsome. I think you’d make a good rock star.”

I smile. This old woman is exactly the kind of comic relief ego boost I need right now. “You’re too kind. I, uh, just broke up withmy long-term girlfriend. So that’s not exactly on my mind right now. But I do like to write my own songs. I’m just not a rock star,”

“Not a rock staryet.” She winks. “Every great songwriter writes their best songs after a breakup. That’s lucky.”

A slight smile forms on my face. “It’s lucky that I broke up with the girl I’ve thought for years I was going to marry? That’s one way to look at it.”

“If it was meant to be, it would be. It’s that simple. You and she weren’t meant to be.”

“She was… She was perfect, though,” I lament.

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