We drove back to Houston from New Braunfels the next day, and when we got there, I asked Alex if he'd mind if I came up to his apartment. My shoulders were still sore from driving in the day before, and I wanted a backrub. Then I wanted a nap. I hadn't slept much in the past few days, and I wanted to make sure I was safe before I hit the road back to Shreveport. That was all fine and good with him, so we headed on up. The only problem was that Alex still owed me a backrub and I didn't get much of a nap. We kept on talking, picking up right where we'd left off the night before, and talking, and curling up with each other, and then, by god, it was getting on toward the next day, we were still awake, and I still hadn't left. More to the point, I didn't want to leave. In fact, I was wondering quite literally how I was going to tear myself away to head home, back to Shreveport.

I wasn't even going to think about Idaho and the fact that in another two days I would be gone from Shreveport for good. That was a subject that we had both avoided bringing up - I guess neither of us wanted to break the spell and the mood of that day by contemplating a future where the probability of our staying connected was slim. But I can only turn off my nit-picking brain for so long, and a little before midnight, I remember turning toward Alex and saying something like, What is this? We decided to prolong the answering of that question until the next day. . . in another ten minutes. The clock turned over, and a little while later, Alex asked, "So what are we going to do?" I was quiet for a few minutes, trying to think of how to put my answer. My gut reaction was pretty clear: I cannot walk away from this.

Forget Idaho, and the demands of my upcoming residency, and the extraordinarily long odds of anything working out between us in the long run, and any other more rational line of thought. That was how I felt, logical or not. I thought a while more, and then came out and said just that: I cannot walk away from this. Let Alex take that as he would. And while I call my gut reaction illogical and irrational - because, on the surface of things, it screams such - again, I'd call this another one of those rare situations where my overly-analytical brain was somehow able to step back and shut up and recognize that whatever the negative odds seemed to be, and however the obvious facts seemed to line up against this, there was something else going on that would not let my conscious brain simply chalk up all of this to insanity and toss it by the wayside. Oddly enough, I don't remember the details of what he answered at the time. I just remember being comforted by the fact that he seemed to fell the same way I did. That was enough for me to go to sleep on, however brief that sleep was bound to be by this point.

Anyway, we slept for a little bit, then got up and attempted to get me out the door expediently, as I had an obscene amount of packing still left to do and an ever-telescopingly small amount of time to do it in. That didn't exactly work. We couldn't leave dangling any longer the fact of my imminent move to Idaho. We were talking, and I don't remember exactly how it came up, but I distinctly remember Alex saying, "At the risk of being obsessed, I could move to Idaho." I was absolutely staggered. Truth be told, if I looked deep enough into Camille's ideal perfect (and wholly unrealistic) world to see what I was really wanting to happen, that was precisely what I was wishing for but didn't dare to hope for - for multiple reasons. The sheer unlikelihood of something like that happening, in real life, to me, was one thing. The probability, or rather, the lack thereof, of Alex's being able to find work in Idaho was another thing.

The biggest thing was that I absolutely did not want this from Alex if there was going to be a net self-sacrifice on his part by moving to Idaho. I don't do that myself, and I don't expect that or want it from anyone else - particularly not from any romantic partner, and I wasn't sure of exactly what was running through Alex's head when he made that suggestion. But yet again, some higher order of logic in my brain superceded the usual doubts about someone's motives and left me able to trust that Alex meant it and meant it for the right reasons. And as blown away as I was by his offer, some part of my brain was not surprised; this was where the events of the last 24 hours had all been heading, and I think some part of me likewise knew that from the start. I don't remember exactly what I said back to Alex, just something in the affirmative, I think, something indicating how happily blown away I was by the prospect of his moving to Idaho.

I finally dragged myself out the door of his apartment; how, I don't know. Those last few minutes with Alex then are a blur. I remember that he seemed sad and not overly optimistic - not like I could blame him. I was just trying as hard as I could to block from my mind for as long as I could all the lonely feelings that I knew were going to invade it with my imminent separation from Alex. That being said, strange as it sounds, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that things were going to work between us, despite everything stacked up against us. I remember I said to him, when he was standing there looking about as miserable as I felt, "I'm taking you with me to Idaho" - and I meant it. Not literally, not physically at the time, but in terms of taking with me, inside of me, what I felt for him, the connection between us, and my commitment to doing what I could to help this work, I meant that 100%. No doubts.