The Wrong Off-Ramp

I took the wrong exit on purpose. That's not something I usually do. I'm the person who memorizes the route before I leave. I'm the person who has the GPS on even when I know where I'm going. I'm the person who hates being lost. But on that Tuesday, I took the wrong exit on purpose. I had been driving for six hours. San Francisco to Portland. A trip I'd made a dozen times. I knew the route. I knew the exits. I knew which gas stations had clean bathrooms and which ones had coffee that wasn't burnt. But that day, I took the wrong exit. Because I didn't want to go home.

The wrong exit took me into the mountains. I don't know the name of the road. It was narrow. It was winding. It was dark. The GPS kept telling me to turn around. I turned the GPS off. I drove. Twenty minutes. Forty minutes. An hour. The road ended at a lodge. A place that looked like it had been there since the seventies. Wood panels. A neon sign that said "VACANCY" with the V flickering. I parked. I went inside. The woman at the front desk had gray hair and a tattoo of a butterfly on her wrist. She asked if I wanted a room. I said yes. She asked how many nights. I said one. I didn't know what I would do after that.

The room was small. A bed. A TV. A bathroom with a shower that trickled. I sat on the bed. I didn't turn on the TV. I didn't turn on the light. I sat in the dark. I had been in the car for six hours. I had been in the house for three months. I had been in this life for thirty-nine years. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know why I took the exit. I didn't know why I was sitting in a motel room in the mountains with no plan and no GPS and no wife.

I opened my laptop. The motel WiFi was slow. I checked my email. Nothing. I checked my bank account. Eight hundred dollars. That was it. Eight hundred dollars in checking. A thousand in savings. A house I couldn't sell. A mortgage I couldn't pay. A job I couldn't focus on. I closed the browser. I opened it again. I had a bookmark I'd saved a long time ago. I don't remember saving it. I don't remember why. I clicked it. The site loaded slowly. The graphics were glitchy. The WiFi was bad. But it loaded. I looked at it for a while. I had never gambled before. I didn't play cards. I didn't buy lottery tickets. I didn't bet on games. But I was in a motel in the mountains, with eight hundred dollars and a house I couldn't afford and a wife who was in Arizona. I opened the Vavada mirror.

Dernière modification par copperlorianne (23-03-2026 18:54:49)