The drive to Connecticut was easy. There were hardly any other cars on the road. It was foggy and grey and the highway seemed to stretch out endlessly in front of me. The governor had warned against crossing state lines except for an emergency. The emergency, I had convinced myself, was that I was bored and that I missed you. But really, I wanted something to hold onto. Something to think about.

            You were staying in your bandmate’s house in Connecticut. His name was Jimmy and he older and very wealthy. There was a recording studio attached to his house, a small building surrounded by trees. I had met him in New York, but I was too drunk to remember his face. Apparently we were in a VIP room for a club and then at his Soho loft. “He really liked you,” you told me the next morning.

            I drove down a dirt road until I saw you. You were standing outside the house in a sweatshirt, your body hunched over in that way it always was. When we touched, it felt awkward. Like I was meeting you for the first time, like we hadn’t been doing this for the past year.

            The house was everything you promised it to be. It was clean and large and the windows stretched from the floor to the ceiling, exposing what seemed like miles and miles of bare trees. It was early April — that moment between winter and spring, when everything seems paused and motionless. As I walked around, I held my breath. You put your hand on my back cautiously, as if to prove that I was really there.

            “It feels strange to touch another person,” you said. I nodded.

            Jimmy seemed happy to see me and I was glad he was there. He acted as a buffer, someone to fill the silence so that I didn’t have to speak directly to you, didn’t have to figure out exactly what it was we were doing.

            We went into the recording studio and you went behind the booth and picked up your bass. You and Jimmy were recording something for your band back in New York. I listened as you played the same melody over and over again, as Jimmy nodded sometimes and shook his head at others. It all sounded the same to me. Jimmy sat beside me and showed me how they layered the different tracks over each other. He showed me which buttons to press. I had never seen you play like this, so alone and focused. I felt like I was watching something too intimate, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. You kept your head down, focused on your fingers. I never knew that music could stretch over distance like that, that it could be broken down into separate parts.

            I felt like I had crossed a line. Like I had taken a step I wasn’t aware I was taking. I wanted to get back in my car and drive home to my parent's house. But I was here and you were here and Jimmy was counting on us. So I stayed and listened.

            Back in New York, you had done a lot of drugs. You bought a gram of blow for $40 from a dealer who gave you a discount. You bought percs when you had enough money saved to do so. Right before everything shut down, you got so high and drunk that you begged me to delete your dealer’s number in your phone. Then, you made me go through your room and collect all the tiny bits of paper you had written it down on. I gathered them, ripped them up in front of you. I watched as your face changed, as you realized what you had done.

            You had tried to give everything up multiple times, had gone through phases of eating enough candy to fight off the urge to drink, had not spoken to me for days while you tried to exist in complete silence. I was trying to help you but I didn’t know how. I felt like I didn’t know you, like I was waiting for something to happen that never would.

            It all came to a head when you called me one morning as I was on my way to work. Something broke inside of me, pulled me down.

            “I think I’m dying,” you said. Your chest was tight, you couldn’t breathe. I looked out the train window at the sun reflecting off of a building. I couldn’t do this, I told myself. It had to end. By the time I had called my boss, turned around, reached your stop, I had changed my mind.

            You told me to bring a bottle of wine. We drank as Jimmy made us vegan pizza. We talked about the band, about my work, about the state of the world, how it seemed to be disappearing right in front of us. You were louder than normal. You seemed happy.

            After dinner you asked if we could get more alcohol. You said you wanted to keep drinking. We got in your van and drove through the trees, through the night. All the liquor stores were closed. Eventually, we got to a gas station.

            “We don’t sell alcohol here,” the cashier said. “Connecticut state law.”

            We drove back to the house. I could tell that you were on edge. That you felt uncomfortable with the silence that was hanging over us. That your body was shaking, searching for some substance to calm itself.

            During a period of sobriety, the longest and most successful one throughout my time knowing you, everything changed. You carved out time for me, made me dinner. I sat on the floor in your living room and ate slowly and listened to the rain. You spoke softly, like you were choosing each word carefully.

            “You have to tell me how you’re feeling,” you told me, your hand on the back of my neck. I was trying to figure out a way to let you in, to stop holding myself back. I didn’t answer for a while. Instead, I listened to the faint sound of your neighbor’s conversation through the wall. Their voices were loud, like they were fighting.

            That night we slept without touching. The rain stopped by morning and I woke to sun coming in from the window, to your deep, sleeping breaths. On my train ride home, I felt lighter, hopeful. Maybe things would be different this time, I thought. Maybe I could reach out across the distance we had both created between us. Maybe I could stop having doubts. Maybe this could somehow make sense.

            Back at the house, Jimmy went to bed. He seemed to sense that we needed some time alone. We sat on the screened-in porch in jackets. You smoked a cigarette and I looked out at the darkness. I was leaving tomorrow and we could feel the time we had together dwindling.

            “When do you go back to Brooklyn?” I asked.

            “I’m not sure. I’m going to stay out here for a couple of weeks, probably. There’s more space.”

            I thought about the darkness surrounding us. I wanted to ask you if we could walk through the trees, if we could try to see the stars. But I thought that if we moved, if I spoke, something would break.

            I pictured you sleeping here, waking here. I pictured you not drinking or doing drugs, playing music and falling into a steady rhythm. I pictured me making the 2 and a half hour drive every couple of weeks, us going on walks through the trees. I pictured us holding hands and falling into a familiarity that we had never quite been able to reach.

            I knew it wouldn’t happen. That you would grow bored and restless and return to the city in a couple of days. That you would start doing Ketamine because cocaine, in the world’s current state, was harder to find. That you would break up me with slowly, pulling away inch by inch until you finally called me and told me it wasn’t working as I sat on the couch in my parent’s living room.

            But then, that didn’t matter. You moved close to me, touched my arm, and we existed outside of everything for a moment — just the two of us, just the darkness and the trees and the steady breathing of your body next to mine