Chapter 2-Esme
The road stretches out in front of me, long and winding, cutting through trees just starting to turn with early summer.
Not full-on summer yet, but there are hints of it if you know where to look—dark greens touched with budding leaves in pale chartreuse, the occasional branch already heavy with full leaves and growing fruit at the edges, sunlight flickering across my windshield in broken ribbons as I drive deeper into northern New Jersey.
It should be pretty.
It is pretty.
But I barely see any of it.
Because my mind?
My mind is stuck on him.
Benjamin Gunner.
Benji.
It always comes back to him.
It doesn’t matter how many miles I put between us, how many states I cross, how many quirky roadside diners or hand-painted fruit stands, or sunsets over gas station parking lots I film for my audience.
My brain is like a dog with an old bone where Benji is concerned.
It keeps circling back, chewing the same sore spot over and over until everything in me feels raw.
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, my thumb tapping nervously against the worn leather wrap as the little blue dot on my map app inches closer to the flag I dropped.
Took me long enough to find him.
Military records were a dead end, which doesn’t surprise me.
Locked up tighter than Fort Knox, full of official wording and apologetic emails and some version of we can’t disclose that information repeated over and over again until I wanted to scream.
Good thing I don’t rely on polite.
I huff out a dry laugh, and glance at the phone mounted on the dash.
“Thank you, internet,” I mutter.
Turns out having a couple hundred thousand followers—and a handful of die-hard fans who live for chaos, justice, and a challenge—comes in handy.
Especially when some of those fans just happen to be, let’s say creatively gifted in the hacking department.
I didn’t ask too many questions.
I just accepted the coordinates.
Because I need this done.
Need him to sign those papers.
My chest tightens at the thought.
According to law, Benji Gunner is my husband.
I let out a slow breath through my nose and shake my head.
“Apparently,” I murmur.
Because that’s the kicker, isn’t it?
I built an entire life over the past three years—out of nothing, from the literal back of my converted van—and somehow, legally speaking, I still belong to the man who shattered me.
Life’s funny like that.
Or cruel.
Probably both.
I glance around the inside of my van—the soft rust-colored blankets folded over the bench seat, the tiny kitchenette I installed with help from a retired carpenter in Oregon, the camera rig mounted by the dash, the fairy lights I never bothered taking down because they make even Walmart parking lots feel a little less lonely.
Home.
My home.
It didn’t start out that way.
At first, it was just survival.
No job. No money. No plan.
No husband.
No real family to fall back on.
Just a broken heart and a desperate need to get as far away from that empty military housing unit as possible before I drowned in it.
So I drove.
One state.
Then another.
I slept in parking lots, truck stops, rest areas, national park lots, church lots, anywhere I could feel halfway safe.
I lived on peanut butter crackers and gas station coffee and the kind of numbness that only comes when your entire future implodes and you don’t have the luxury of sitting down to mourn it.
At first, I waitressed to make ends meet. Little dive bars and coffee shops. Places where I worked for tips and maybe a meal.
And in my spare time, I filmed little clips just to keep myself occupied.
“Hi guys,” I’d said into my phone one morning, sitting in a rest stop outside Ohio with mascara smudged under my eyes and a stale muffin in my lap. “So today I’m in, uh, honestly, I don’t even know where I am.”
I smile despite myself at the memory.
It was a mess.
I was a mess.
But it was real.
And for some insane reason, people liked that.
They connected.
They liked that I wasn’t polished or perfect.
They liked that I was curvy and tired and trying.
They liked that I could review a roadside pie stand in one minute and talk about emotional recovery in the next.
They liked my laugh and my mistakes and the way I’d cry over sunsets and then roast a terrible motel in the same video.
“Plus Size Life with Esme and a Van,” I say out loud now, smiling a little.
Catchy enough.
Now it’s my actual life.
My job.
My career.
Me.
I travel.
I review products.
I meet and interview new people.
I take videos of landscapes and food and artisans and flea markets, and weird little towns that would never have crossed my radar otherwise.
I post outfit links and snack reviews and mental health ramblings, and deep thoughts while parked beside rivers in Vermont or red rock in Arizona.
I’ve got producers now, and brand deals, and a manager who says things like “lean into your authenticity” and “the audience loves your resilience.”
I finally made something of myself.
Something good.
Something mine.
And for the first time in my adult life, I felt like I belonged somewhere.
Not in a house.
Not with a man.
Not behind someone else’s name.
But in my own skin.
A little bubble of freedom on four wheels.
Until this mess dropped on my head like a cartoon anvil on a coyote.
See, one of the producers—bless her ambitious little gremlin heart—pitched a new segment.
“Let’s do a dating series, Esme,” she’d said over Zoom, eyes sparkling like she’d personally invented romance. “You travel, meet people, go on dates, show your audience what it’s like—real, raw, romantic, messy. It’ll be huge.”
I laughed.
Actually laughed.
Because dating?
Me?
After Benji?
Yeah. No.
But then again, I’ve been thinking about settling and this is the perfect segway because—do I really want to be alone for the rest of my life?
The answer is no.
I really don’t.
Just because one man didn’t want me—couldn’t believe me—doesn’t mean I have to be alone forever.
Does it?
I mean, I still want that house I always dreamed of. And children—God, I still want babies.
And someone who loves me.
So after a couple of days of just thinking, I agreed to do a dating segment.
But then we hit a snag.
A big one.
“Uh, Esme?” my manager had said a week later, voice gone careful in that way that always means bad news. “Your divorce. Um, it’s not exactly finalized.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not finalized.”
“Okay, but it was filed.”
Silence.
Then.
“Apparently not.”
I’d gone cold all over.
Because the papers?
Never signed.
Not by him.
And that means every single step I’ve taken toward building a life beyond Benjamin Gunner has technically been taken while I’m still married to him.
Still tied.
Still stuck.
To the man who believed the worst of me without hearing my side.
To the man who took one look at a lie and decided I was capable of betraying him.
To the man I still, somehow, ridiculously, heartbreakingly dream about.
Because obviously I have issues.
Shit.
I tighten my hands on the wheel again as the memory shifts and something else slithers in to replace it.
Notes sent to my private email and cell number.
Messages stuck beneath my windshield wipers.
The awful feeling of being watched.
I glance up at the rearview mirror without meaning to.
The road is empty.
No cars or trucks, or people.
Still, my stomach clenches.
It started small enough.
Weird DMs. Anonymous comments on old videos.
Pretty girls shouldn’t travel alone.
I know where you parked last night.
You looked cold in Pennsylvania. I could warm you up.
At first, I blocked them.
Deleted them.
Rolled my eyes.
Comes with the territory, people said.
Internet creeps are everywhere.
But then it escalated.
Last stop was in Pennsylvania—Green Dragon Market.
I’d gone there because one of my followers swore I had to see the Amish farmers' market, and honestly? It was adorable.
Fresh baked bread, jams, baskets, quilts, flowers, pies the size of steering wheels.
I filmed a little segment on homemade chow-chow and hand-stitched potholders and bought enough baked goods to justify skipping dinner.
For a few hours, I forgot.
Forgot the unsigned papers.
Forgot Benji.
Forgot the weird comments.
Until I walked back out to the van.
And found a bouquet of blackened roses with a red ribbon tucked under the drivers’ side windshield wiper.
No note.
No card.
Just dead roses, brittle and wrong, like someone had gone out of their way to send a message.
I stood there in the parking lot, staring at them while the hair on the back of my neck lifted.
Then my phone buzzed.
Private number.
A text.
Dead things can still be beautiful if you look close enough.
I almost threw up.
After that day, “maybe it’s just internet weirdos” didn’t quite cut it anymore.
Then came the broken lock on the small apartment I sublet in Philly when I tried to crash there for two nights before heading to Jersey.
Nothing stolen.
Nothing obviously touched.
Just the lock jimmied and a pair of my clean panties draped over the chair by the window like someone had been waiting for me.
That was enough.
Enough to make me leave.
Enough to make me stop pretending I could handle this alone.
Enough to make finding out I was still married feel less like a bureaucratic headache and more like a grim little gift from the universe.
Because if I need help?
If I need cover?
If I need a reason to find the one man who once promised I’d never face anything alone?
Well, then I’d say unsigned divorce papers are a hell of an excuse.
The trees thin as I crest a hill, and then I see it.
His place. His ranch.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
It stretches out wider than I expected—rolling land, crisp fence lines, barns, paddocks, cattle dotting the distance.
For New Jersey?
It’s massive.
I’ve visited this state before, but mostly the beach. Boardwalks. Salt air. Crowds.
Shore towns and fried dough and sunburned people in flip-flops.
But this? This is another world entirely.