Last Dance

The following is a semi-autobiographical story that has greatly influenced the writing of my novel series, “The Desert Road of Night.”

Photo by V. E. Marés.

I bumped into my ex-girlfriend, Céline, as I was leaving a restaurant with a woman I had met through a dating app. My date had spent the entire evening talking about herself and how amazing of an artist she was, even saying at one point, “Not that you'd get it immediately—most people don’t—but you need a high IQ to grasp the genius …