A Word from the Author

You might’ve noticed something missing in these stories.

There’s no official town name. No street names. The high school is just the high school. Later, there’s the college, the city, downtown, the gas station — maybe even the ocean. None of it’s labeled on a map.

That’s on purpose.

Because Jesse and Cal’s story doesn’t belong to one zip code.

This kind of love — quiet, terrifying, hopeful, real — plays out behind bleachers and inside truck cabs and under broken streetlamps in every town. In the middle of nowhere. In the suburbs. In places you’d never guess and places you never left. I didn’t want to tether this story to a place. I wanted it to feel like it could’ve happened down the road from you. Or maybe it already did.

As for last names? I left those off, too.

Jesse and Cal don’t need them here. You know them already — in that unspoken, I-see-you way that’s more personal than any full name could ever be. That’s the kind of closeness I wanted between them, and with you.

So if these pages feel familiar... good.

Maybe the point isn’t where the story is set.

Maybe the point is that it could’ve happened anywhere.

Maybe the point is that it did.

— D.D.