Page 1 of We Are Just Us

ONE

I-5 out of Sacramento had been straight and uneventful, like most of Kieran Doyle’s life. For nine hours, he drove with nothing but a podcast, a half-eaten gas station burrito, and the occasional snore from the back seat as his two springer spaniels, Hank and Mabel, shifted around in their nest of blankets. Now his Subaru smelled like dog, spilled iced coffee, and a faint trace of BO.

So much for seventy-two-hour coverage.

A deep, buzzing kind of nerve had set in—the kind that came from getting rid of ninety percent of his stuff, shoving what was left into a portable storage unit, and moving to a town he’d never actually seen.

He’d quit his job in corporate communications for a tech startup—a gig that managed to be soul-crushing by Tuesday afternoons—exactly three weeks before the escrow closed on his mom’s house.

He’d moved back into his childhood home right before she died, and stayed for two stagnant years after, under the illusion that it would somehow help. It didn’t. It was just a house full of her things and none of her, until the walls started to cave in on him.

“I totally get it,” Emory had said when he told her. She’d been his best friend since middle school, and the only person who’d ever seen him eat an entire rotisserie chicken standing over the sink and never once judged him for it.

“But do you really have to move so far away?”

“Absolutely.”

The truth was, he hadn’t driven more than fifteen minutes at a time since the funeral. Grocery store. Vet. The occasional errand that couldn’t be delivered.

Somewhere in the heavy fog of grief, driving became one thing his body simply decided it couldn’t do. His hands would white-knuckle the wheel before he even reached the freeway on-ramp, and he'd talk himself onto the surface streets instead, telling himself it was faster even though Kieran knew it wasn’t.

So when he finally packed the dogs into the Subaru and pointed it south with no real destination—the vague, desperate idea of ocean and distance—the drive itself was the test.

Every mile was a mile farther than he’d gone in two years.

Somewhere around hour four, he’d pulled into a gas station with shaking hands and found a spiky rubber fidget squeezer on a rack near the register. He squeezed it until his palm ached, then he got back on the freeway.

Nine hours. He’d actually made it nine hours.

But the highway started to blur somewhere around San Clemente, the taillights ahead smearing into long red streaks.

By the time he hit Oceanside, his chest was tight and heavy, like someone had stacked books on his sternum and sat down.

So he finally pulled off Exit 52. His body decided it was finished driving, and he’d learned not to argue with it.

He sat in a random parking lot for ten minutes with the engine running and the AC blasting his face, waiting until his vision cleared enough to Google “dog-friendly hotel near me.”

The first three places he called said no vacancy. The fourth would take dogs, but only under twenty pounds, which ruled out Hank by double and Mabel by…enough. The fifth had a wedding that reserved the entire property for the night, and the sixth put him on hold for so long he eventually hung up.

The seventh was a run-down place in Encinitas called Cliffside Lodge. Outside there was a flickering VACANCY light, and a woman stood inside at the front desk who casually confirmed that yes, they took dogs of any size.

“One queen or two?” she asked.

“Just one,” Kieran said, the word sitting heavier on his tongue than it should have.

He was too tired to care that the room smelled of old carpet or that the shower had suspicious grout. He didn’t care that he ended up somewhere he’d never heard of, in a town he couldn’t have pointed to on a map, all because two springer spaniels were too big for a Motel 6.

Encinitas. He’d found it purely by accident.

He woke up the next morning to sunlight streaming through the thin motel curtains and the distant, rhythmic crash of waves. Mabel had her head on his shoulder, snoring softly, while Hank was sprawled across the foot of the bed like he owned the place.

Kieran stared up at the stained popcorn ceiling.

It could be worse.

He took the dogs for a walk, found a coffee shop that didn’t look too pretentious, and ordered an oat milk latte. He sat outside, watching surfers paddle out into the early morning swell like they had somewhere important to be.

The weather was perfect—not too hot, not too cold, even for early March.