JLee Davis asks, "Are you happy?" I answer no, and that's the truth. But so is this.

I am floating in a little mudhole of a lake after driving across west Texas in an unairconditioned car in the middle of summer. Families are gathered on a spit of trucked-in sandy beach and little kids with water wings are shrieking with delight as they bob up and down. The water is warm, but I am buoyant, and it’s effortless to float. There is not a tree in sight.

After we swim, my traveling companion and I decide to take a ride up a muddy river on a pretend steamboat. We pay our money and sit on a bench seat at the very back and look out over the paddlewheel, watching the wake churn up behind the boat. My companion smiles and puts his arm around me. I feel completely safe.

In the car, sweating and stuck to the bucket seats, we suffered. But now we don’t. The absence of pain is palpable, the chattering in my head, the incessant wondering, planning, thinking—gone. There are no words.

That night, we roll out the sleeping bags in the open air in a field next to the mudhole. Friends but not lovers, we lie head to head and look up at a cloudless night sky and the zillion pinpricks of light. Here and there, a shooting star. I feel small in the world, but I understand completely that even though I am dizzy, the ground underneath is holding me tight.

Sometimes I feel like this never happened, and that if I were to try to find this place on a map, I will discover it never existed. But the memory of my traveling companion as we sit together by that mudhole after swimming is as distinct as any memory I have. My companion has an avocado in his hand. He cuts it in half, leaving the skin on and carefully removing the slippery seed. We take turns eating the fruit with a spoon.