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“I’m not fleeing. I’m taking the trip we always take.”

“You slipped a we into a bunch of I’s. That’s the thing I’m talking about.”

I look down at my shoes on the dirty floor. “I can’t stay here, Don.”

The room quiets around that sentence, though nothing actually stops. Tape tears. Boxes scrape. The truck idles outside the door.

“I can’t sit in that house waiting for life to move me.”

Don’s expression shifts. Maybe pity, if he’s capable of it.

“I need distance.” I gesture around the room. “From all of this we.”

And Clint. Or the possibility of him. I don’t say that part.

I turn away and tape a box shut without even looking inside it. Don lets me have the silence for three strips.

“I’m still coming with you,” he says. “I’m not letting you weep on the beach alone.”

“I do not weep.”

“You leak tragically.”

I almost laugh.

“Besides,” he says, looking around the half-stripped bar, “I’m a fresh divorcee. I deserve an international gay field trip.”

“It’s final?” I ask, relieved to hand over focus.

“It’s evolving.”

Don and his sort-of ex have been divorcing for centuries.

Landy appears from the back carrying a box of feather boas. “Who gets these?”

Don and I answer at the same time.

“Storage,” I say.

“Me,” Don says.

Landy looks between us.

I sigh. “He can take them.”

“Perfect for the trip,” Don says.

The light outside slips lower. Corners of the bar go gray. The wall behind the stage looks naked without the posters.

Without the glow and neon, the place looks brutally ordinary. Scuffed floor. Exposed outlets. A room that was only magic because people kept insisting it was.

Maybe everything is like that. Love. Places. People.

Don bumps his shoulder lightly against mine.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get the last of it done.”

I nod, because there’s nothing else I can do. The Man Cave is gone, and tomorrow I pack for Puerto Vallarta.