An hour and a half after leaving the hotel, we pulled up in front of a generic apartment building in the beach town where I'd gone to college.
Aside from a general "this looks like a postcard" kind of familiarity, I didn't recognize anything. The palm trees and red and purple bougainvillaea everywhere, and the tile roofs didn't spark anything in me besides the discomfort of not feeling at home when I knew I ought to.
Drew shut off the engine and turned to me. "You ready, baby?"
I wasn't, I really, really wasn't. But it had to be done. And we'd gotten this far. We'd talked it over on the second half of the drive. Seeing my parents first might've been the right place to start, but I simply couldn't face them yet.
Besides, they seemed a lot less likely to know what the hell had been going on with me, in general and on the night I disappeared, than someone I'd maybe been dating and had definitely spent time with as a friend.
