The About six years ago now, I'll just a girl who, I'll just call Julia.

I'd been with her for about eight months when the story took place.

We had, so I thought, a pretty normal, happy, healthy relationship.

We did all the things a young couple does.

We lived and worked in the same town.

We met on OKCupid, and we had a few dates and then got serious.

After eight months, we hadn't moved in together, although I'd been thinking of asking her.

Julia always talked about how she liked her independence, though, and I didn't want to make the mistake I'd made in my last

relationship of coming on too strong or moving too fast. Instead of living together, we would take

regular vacations together. They were usually long weekend getaways, either to visit my folks or

shopping trips. One time, we did a tour of a few theme parks over the course of some weekends, and it was

great, and we became the couple that vacationed together.

I thought everything was going perfectly.

Like I said, I was thinking of asking her to move in, and maybe down the line popping

the question.

To my knowledge, our relationship was solid as a mountain. And I'm sure that since I'm saying all of this, you've already worked out

that it wasn't. Instead, it became a source of crushing fear for me in a way that I could have

never have predicted. We'd never been camping before.

We didn't want to have to spend too long in the road, so the nearby state of Rhode Island

seemed like a perfect destination.

It has a number of fantastic campgrounds, and we pick the one that looked the most appealing.

Something not too isolated, but not too busy either, and fairly near the

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