Of course I was driving. Six months of sobriety had made me the default designated driver, hauling my booze-seeking, wayward roommates home from bars—or, occasionally, the police station. Thankfully, that was rare. At first, not drinking had been unbearable. But nothing felt worse than getting drunk mid-psychotic episode, after starting meds. The magical cocktail of Atarax, Sertraline, and obscenely expensive Lamotrigine in my bloodstream did not appreciate my little bender. I tried my best not to remember that night—spent feverish, with consciousness slipping in and out, hugging the toilet. But then it turned out that living without alcohol and Matthew’s pharmaceutical arsenal was actually possible. Starting treatment had been hard. When my boyfriend finally managed to insist that I see a psychiatrist–which, honestly, every-fucking-one around me had been suggesting, but I’d ignored it all and just flipped them off–it had seemed like a horrible, pointless waste of money, energy, and time. But he—Jesus Christ, an angel in the flesh, sent to me for God knows what reason, who put up with all the self-destructive, psychotic bullshit I pulled—was my boyfriend. We hadn’t been officially together long then, and... I just couldn’t let him down again. Because no matter how much I hated myself, I fucking loved him. And sure, I skipped pills, canceled therapy appointments—but somewhere through the haze of self-destructive delirium, I realized he deserved better. And, holy fucking hell, I decided to at least try to do one goddamn thing right in my life. And it worked. Un-fucking-believable. First, my sleep improved, and waking up rested felt obscenely good. On sertraline, I started dreaming—real, vivid dreams, not fucking nightmares. Then I noticed my jeans didn’t hang as surrealistically on my scrawny frame, and actually, my body wasn’t as bony anymore. At some point, I recognized myself in the mirror. I stood there for hours that day, just staring in disbelief. Like I’d suddenly regained self-awareness at the age of five. Turned out, people weren’t actually thrilled by my bitter, passive-aggressive jabs. But as the noise in my head reduced, my jokes got funnier. Kinder, even genuinely good sometimes. And when someone laughed, I actually felt good. Especially when he laughed. In those moments, I even felt joy, though I hadn’t thought my scorched serotonin receptors were even capable of processing signals anymore. And driving him to actual dates—not just up to the roof to smoke and drink beer—felt incredible. Little things he had casually mentioned started popping up in my memory, and making them real became my favorite fucking pastime, even if I denied it. Agreeing to hang out with friends—who, as it turned out, Vincent and Matthew were, something I’d somehow managed to forget—still felt weird. But every now and then, I’d drag myself to Vincent’s dumb pseudo-emo parties or go to one of Matthew’s not-completely-shitty band shows. And now, I was driving toward a fucking lakeside cabin Vincent hadn’t shut up about for the past two weeks. One of his family’s many properties, in the middle of fucking nowhere—a fifteen-hour drive with all the stops for shitty coffee, bathroom breaks, and Vincent’s photoshoots next to some moss-covered aesthetic stump in the "woods" – which was really just an elite tree-lined suburb with cottages and summer houses owned by other trust-fund families who wanted nature without the indignity of going to an actual forest. Muffled post-punk in the background, cool leather seats, an absurdly smooth suspension (of course Vincent had a fucking Infiniti, goddamn him), and a dark, empty highway stretching beyond the windows. And when the guys finally stopped belting out terrible pop songs, retelling the same stories for the tenth time, playing stupid word games, and—slightly drunk—passed the fuck out in the back seat, driving became especially peaceful. But the best part was the fact that, in the passenger seat to my right, sat a slightly drowsy boyfriend. Curled up in my jacket, unbearably soft, looking out at the passing scenery, beautiful and— Enough. Watch the road. I shook my head, forcing down that stupid grin that made me look like a complete idiot. The song changed, Matthew snored, and my mind was quiet. Still unfamiliar. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him shiver slightly, pulling the denim tighter around himself. And that disgustingly sweet, newly acquired instinct kicked in again. "Cold?" I asked quietly, softly—because the idiots were asleep and couldn’t start teasing me, and because my heart was doing that warm, pulsing thing again just thinking about him. The answer hadn’t even come yet, but I already reached for the climate control, nudging the temperature up a couple degrees. "Not much longer now. We’ll be there in about an hour."