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Behind him, I hear a door open, then Jon’s voice saying something I can't make out. Knox answers without covering the phone. The normal sound of their life moves through the line and settles in my chest. The same one that I’ve worked so hard not to feel anything with.

I should hang up. Instead, I listen.

“Cabin’s fine,” Knox says after a moment.

I stop breathing. “I didn’t ask.”

“No,” he replies.

The room feels smaller than it did a second ago.

He doesn’t tell me more. Doesn’t mention whether anyone has gone inside or whether Raven’s coffee mug is still sitting beside the sink because I never managed to put it away. He doesn’t tell me if the bed is still unmade from the last morning we woke up there together.

He only says it’s fine.

I lift the bottle to my mouth, but the smell turns my stomach.

“Don’t call me tomorrow.”

“You going to answer if I do?” Knox asks.

“No.”

“Then it won’t matter.”

“Knox…”

“Call me before the truck quits.”

He doesn’t say goodbye before the line goes dead.

For a long time, I sit on the edge of the bed with the phone in one hand and the bottle in the other, listening to the television murmur in the background.

I could call him back.

The thought comes and goes so quickly it almost doesn’t count.

Instead, I set the phone facedown on the nightstand and drink until the room tilts enough that I have to lie back. My boots remain on. The lights stay on too, but I don’t have the energy to reach for the lamp.

Sleep doesn’t come easily anymore, no matter how much I drink. I hover somewhere near it, close enough to lose track of the room but not far enough to escape what waits for me every time I close my eyes.

Cold water.

Raven’s weight in my arms.

Her lips moving as she told me goodbye.

My hand finds the empty half of the bed on its own, some instinct I haven’t managed to unlearn yet, and closes around nothing.

The pain cuts through the whiskey, muted but still sharp enough to find me. I drag the second pillow against my chest, pressing my face into the fabric that smells like detergent and strangers.

We never had enough nights for it to become ordinary, but she would shove at my shoulder and tell me to move over, even though she followed me every time I did.

Now I could sleep in the middle of every bed from here to California and never touch another person.

I close my eyes.

Tomorrow, I’ll find work if I need money. I’ll drive until this town disappears with all the others. And when the sun goes down, I’ll find another room.