For Somewhere We've Never Been

Chapter 1: Gift Card

The Airbnb gift cards stayed in the kitchen drawer for eleven months.

Daniel kept them beneath a roll of brown packing tape, two dead batteries, and a small collection of takeaway menus from restaurants that had already closed. Every few weeks, while searching for scissors or a spare key, he would see the corner of the envelope and remember that he was supposed to plan something beautiful.

The envelope had his name written across it in Claire’s narrow handwriting.

*For somewhere we’ve never been.*

She had drawn a tiny sun beside the words.

At first, he thought the gift meant they were finally going away together.

Not a hurried weekend at her sister’s house, where he slept on a sofa bed that folded toward the middle. Not an afternoon trip squeezed between Claire’s plans with friends. A real vacation. Several mornings in the same unfamiliar room. Coffee on a balcony. Long walks without checking the time.

For four years, Daniel had collected small ideas for such a trip.

He saved photographs of white cottages near the sea. He bookmarked a cabin beside a lake where guests could borrow an old green canoe. Once, while Claire slept beside him, he spent nearly an hour reading reviews of a converted railway carriage in the hills.

He could already imagine her laughing at the narrow bed and complaining about the weak shower pressure. He imagined himself waking early and making coffee badly in somebody else’s kitchen.