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1AvaTraveling in atruck had officially lost its chars into the little box truck and headed out onto the highway, there was a certain ro onto a plane to travel was easy All it took was a few hours, so was real It putthe country as I went It would be an adventure, a memory I would carry with me

And I did Right up until I hit hour twenty-four and the disco truck really settled in “Comfort Cab”and the lingering fear in the back of h the rearview mirror because of the truck In that case, they totally nailed it If co else, they needed to work on their vocabulary skills

ThatI picked up a few tricks of the road like putting a rolled-up towel behind ht and support themy favorite music for the last hour of the stretch helped as well And now, finally, the end was in sight I recognized everything around me, and it made my heart feel warm

I was home

Astoria looked different than it did the last tis in this world as beautiful as Oregon at Christone, and there were nothe main street in town The six months that had passed since reen under a gorgeous crystal-blue sky Rolling through the mountains on the same road that wound its way to the sea made me happy A smile came to an and here felt absolutely worth it

I checked the GPS on my phone and saas nearly at the s outside was so at my skin and the s: lanced up fro enthusiastically, she started toward ot out

If I knew Stephanie as well as I thought I did, she had been standing out there for at least half an hour already Not just out of excite forward to o I was co But we also kept up over video chats and spoke just about every day It wasn’t like she was having total withdrawals The truth wascase of FOMO The girl couldn’t stand the idea of nat landed when she batted it out of the sky

A combination ofthe trip should take me let her come up with an estimate for when I’d pull up to the apartment And she wanted to make sure she was there to see it After all, she was the reason I had this apart a place to live wasn’t easy on just a couple of weeks’ notice Not even in Astoria, Oregon

Obviously, I couldn’tto scoop up an where I’d been for the last few years and relocate it all back hoht unseen, but that didn’t appeal to ht I would show up to a rat-infested flop house someone had adorned with a front door wreath and soood, and I was fa, which hy I chose it in the first place But I still wanted to see what I was getting myself into Just in case

So I sent Stephanie as my proxy Ar for inappointment She took pictures, made a video, and asked every question I had As well as a few of her own I was pretty sure those were only so she could keep talking to the attractive young real estate agent In the end, this was the place I settled on, and I was finally here, ready to move in