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from finishing up grad school.

There are times, when I think back on that part of my life, that I still marvel at where I ended up. And I don’t mean the

hot-mess omnishambles of my current life. I mean where I ended up when I was still heading somewhere. A degree in operations

research from the Air Force Academy led to recruitment to AFIT—the Air Force Institute of Technology—where, in addition to

serving my stint as an active officer in the air force, I obtained my MS in operational analysis. I learned to fly and spent

time as a pilot, but thankfully, I had commanding officers who saw that I was more of an asset in a cubicle than in a cockpit.

Now, so many years later, I felt like my life could be divided into two different eras: Before 11/2/10 and After 11/2/10.

The truth is, I rarely spent time thinking about the Before.

It felt so distant. That version of me felt so distant.

In the Before, I hadn’t known for sure what I was going to do with my life, even as I chased those elite degrees, but I had known I was going to do it with Wes.

Never mind that by the time we got to the Before-After time split, I hadn’t seen him in seven years. I still believed he and I were endgame.

I’d been accepted into the academy before high school graduation, but I never told anyone. At that time, in those moments,

in that era, I couldn’t even have said for sure why I’d applied. Maybe just out of curiosity. Mrs. Stoddard had certainly

encouraged me to go that direction. Actually, she’d first encouraged me to try for MIT, but there was no way I was going to

entertain that idea. Wes didn’t have the grades or the money to go anywhere out of state, so a college in Colorado was the

only option. The Air Force Academy was in Colorado Springs, only four hours away, and tuition was free if you were accepted

and committed to serve after graduation, but with Wes’s lackluster GPA and SAT scores, he’d had a better chance of getting

accepted to Hogwarts. That was the joke he always made, anyway. Still, maybe I should have given the academy more serious

consideration when I received my acceptance letter, but Wes was going to Colorado State in Fort Collins.

Therefore, I was going to Colorado State in Fort Collins.

And then, suddenly, I was going nowhere.

It took more than a year for me to come out of the hole. Not that I fully came out of it after a year, mind you, but I thought

I had. In reality, I was more like Punxsutawney Phil, peeking my head out and marveling at my own shadow. But it sure felt

like progress at the time, even just to rise aboveground and breathe some fresh air and declare that winter was, in fact,

going to end eventually. I had no idea what had become of Wes. No idea where he had landed. But I hadn’t stopped believing

he was coming back. That was the worst part of those first few years, I think. As the saying goes, it’s the hope that kills

you, and my belief that he would come back never wavered—but the emotions circling that belief oscillated wildly, depending

on the day.

I was so mad at him. So hurt. No, actually.

.. words like mad and hurt don’t even begin to lend enough weight to how I felt.

I had been destroyed. I remember reading New Moon , the second Twilight book, when it came out in 2006 or so, and just laughing through the whole thing.

Cackling, really. I wasn’t laughing for any of the obvious reasons—just the idea that Bella Swan could be sent spiraling into this bottomless pit of despair and depression over some guy she’d known for, what?

A year? Wes may not have been a sparkly vampire—although I couldn’t help but draw some cold, heartless bloodsucker comparisons—but I knew Bella’s pain was nothing compared to mine.

The Wes I had known since I was born and been in love with since well before I knew how to classify the emotion never would

have left me like that unless there’d been a very good reason for it. But what reason could there possibly be? He’d done something

stupid and careless and unforgivable—but I anxiously awaited the day he would come home so I could forgive him. I anxiously

awaited the day we’d begin putting it all behind us.

And then other days I swore I would never speak to him again. I told myself that when he came back—yes, when , because even on the worst days I couldn’t help but look up expectantly every time a car approached—he could beg and plead

and implore all he wanted, but I would never again acknowledge him. It was my turn to disappear from his life. It was my turn to leave him to wonder what he could have done differently to make sure things turned out the way they

were supposed to. He wouldn’t have to wonder about that for as long as I had, of course. He could have bothered to look me

in the eyes on our wedding day, regardless of what needed to be said or done after that. That’s all it would have taken. We

would have figured it out from there.

It was on one of the angriest days that I reapplied to the Air Force Academy. I reveled in the knowledge that he wasn’t smart

enough to ever join me there. I rested—for the first time, I rested—in the solace that four hours away may as well have been

four lifetimes away. He would never find me there, and I could finally move on.

Except I didn’t. Not until November 2, 2010, when his face popped up on my television screen for the first time. The first

of so many times. Countless times. It was Election Day, and all the buzz was about this new guy on the scene. Wesley Hobbes—the handsome, charismatic son of the beloved governor of Connecticut, and at only twenty-five years old and newly elected, the youngest member of the House of Representatives.

Alongside his beautiful wife of seven months, Wray Gardner-Hobbes.

That was it. That was the moment when time split but my heart began healing. All of a sudden, I understood that he was never

coming back, and I wasn’t crushed. I wasn’t crushed at all. I was relieved. I could finally breathe again.

I finished my master’s and completed my active service, and then I entertained offers from all three branches of government,

several prestigious universities, and at least one European monarchy. Instead, I fought my way into the CIA. Not that I had

to fight , really. I was right for the agency. They knew it, and I knew it. But no one slid into the CIA. My education and references

opened the door, and then I had to prove myself. I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted that job. It was where I belonged.

So there I was, settling down in Langley, fully aware that Wes was just twelve miles down the George Washington Parkway in

the Rayburn Building. It didn’t keep me up at night. It didn’t keep me from going out with friends to trendy Dupont Circle

bars where young politicos were known to hang out. It meant nothing.

And then one day, after I’d been at the agency a year, I delivered a clandestine target analysis report to a collection management officer whose tie was on inside out.

Everyone at times worked crazy hours under unfathomably stressful conditions, so I’d seen women wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe.

Men who forgot their socks. Missed buttons and rumpled, slept-in slacks.

But I’d never seen the small part of the tie in front of the big part, and I couldn’t stop staring at it.

I don’t know why it bothered me so much—had he tied it that way or just slipped it over his head with the wrong side facing out?

—but I couldn’t let it go. So much so that once I’d clocked out for the day, I hurried back to Officer Elwyn’s office to tell him.

He was heading out for the day as well, and when we met up in the hallway, he was quick to tell me how much he would have appreciated me telling him about his tie before his meeting with the deputy administrator of the US Agency for International Development. I promised to be more forthcoming

next time, and he promised to look in a mirror before leaving the house... hopefully to pick me up for dinner.

It had meant nothing that my ex-fiancé was twelve miles down the road, but from that point on, it somehow meant even less

than nothing. But that was a long time ago. Things change.

Now my ex-fiancé was in the back of my car.

***

I glanced at him in the rearview mirror as soon as the interior light faded and we had only moonlight to reflect any potential

connection between our eyes. Moonlight was all I needed to see his gaze locked in place, ready to pull mine in like a tractor

beam once I carelessly looked up. I looked down at the gear stick and shifted into Reverse so I could back out of the parking

space.

“Where to?” I asked as if he were any other tourist from any other flight.

“Addie, I don’t even know what to—”

“Where to?” I repeated as I pulled onto the county road and began heading toward town.

I glanced back at the mirror just as he finally pulled his eyes away. He chewed on his bottom lip before answering. “It’s

called the Inn Between. Do you know it?”

I’d have known him anywhere, that was for sure. Anytime, in any context, in any brightness of light or lack thereof—without question. Even if

I hadn’t seen him on Meet the Press as recently as last Sunday.

Not that I saw even an echo of the boy I had loved in the perfectly-orchestrated-for-ultimate-voter-appeal package that was currently staring out the window.

But eyes and lips don’t change too much, even when gentle creases begin to surround them.

And when you’d spent as many hours staring into someone’s eyes and kissing someone’s lips as I had those of Wes Hobbes, their imprint on your brain couldn’t ever really be expected to leave you.

And maybe it made sense that all of that was as true for him as it was for me, but that hadn’t made it any less shocking to