I'd come here planning to leave as soon as I could. It was a pit stop, not a destination. I had my whole life mapped out." "So what happened?" "I guess that map didn't turn out to be mine after all.

Because maybe, the best of times were yet to come. You never knew.

I walked over, my eyes scanning Luna Blu, my house, and Dave's. But it was the building behind them, that empty hotel, that had the tiniest light, provided by one word, written in fluorescent paint. Maybe it wasn't what was once there, in real life. But in this one, it said it all: STAY.

It's nice to have options even if you can't take them.

I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.

I'd chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all.

The lizard stared up at us, and we stared back, taking each other in. He was little and defenseless, I felt sorry for him already. This was a screwed-up place he'd just come into. But he didn't have to know that. Not yet, anyway. There in that room, where it was hot and cramped, the world probably still seemed small enough to manage.