On the third night, she stopped answering. That wouldn't have bothered me if I hadn't already noticed she'd been oddly brief all day. I sent one message around ten, mostly to check whether she was safe after she mentioned going to a club. Around midnight I tried once more, then left the phone on the nightstand and told myself I was being anxious for no reason. At three in the morning, I woke to the vibration of my phone against the wood.
"Crazy night," she had written. "Talk tomorrow."
There was no apology for worrying me and no detail beyond those two words. I stared at the screen and thought about calling, then decided not to turn a girls' trip into an interrogation. She was an adult on vacation. The version of me who loved her trusted that someone could be unreachable for an evening without betraying him. I went back to sleep badly, but I went back to sleep.
The remaining days passed with fewer messages. Sarah posted photographs from a restaurant, and I saw Zoe in the background laughing with people I didn't recognize. A man in a dark shirt was leaning into one picture, though there were enough strangers in the group that I barely registered him. I asked Zoe whether she was enjoying herself. "Best trip ever," she answered, with a heart emoji that should have comforted me and didn't.
I picked her up at the airport five days after I'd dropped her off. It was late and the terminal was full of tired travelers dragging suitcases behind them. She saw me from across the pickup lane and lifted her hand. She hugged me when she reached the car, but it was a quick, distracted embrace. Her body was there while her attention seemed to remain somewhere behind the terminal doors.
"You okay?" I asked, putting her suitcase in the trunk.
"Just exhausted. We barely slept."
"Good exhausted or bad exhausted?"
"Alex, can we just go home?"
The sharpness surprised me. I told her of course we could and didn't mention it again on the drive. She sat in the passenger seat scrolling through her phone, turning the screen slightly toward the window whenever I glanced in her direction. Once she smiled at something she read, then seemed to remember where she was and put the phone facedown on her leg. I told myself I was noticing details because I missed her and wanted her attention back.
At home she showered and went straight to bed. I put her suitcase by the closet, set a glass of water on her nightstand, and asked if she wanted breakfast together the following morning. She said maybe, then rolled away from me before I'd even finished changing. I lay awake for nearly an hour listening to the radiator click, wondering why the room felt less familiar with her back in it than it had while she was away.