Fourteen Miles

2021

Darkness always arrives before she does.  She never knocks, just waits.  She knows I’m at the window, listening for the low idle of a sedan that at this hour could only be her.  There’s no hello as I climb in; her music is playing, too loud to talk, the way she likes it.  And if she likes it, I like it too.

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The city is quiet as we start to drive, the darkness close around us, never too close, staved off by the glow of streetlights, the 7-11, a red traffic light.  We stop, and wait for our appointed turn without another car in sight.

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Green comes, and we turn left.  North.  The intangible direction of home.  It’s fourteen miles to a gas-station milkshake that will forever taste like nights like this one, and the miles pass quickly.  Too quickly.  The empty road is ours tonight; one lane becoming two, three, four, five; strings of traffic lights ahead, nothing but twinkling green as far as the eye can see.  Go, they whisper.

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Stop, I almost say aloud.  Stop, and share this night with me just a little bit longer.

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Five lanes become four, three, two; and here we are, arrived, suddenly moving through this dream on our own two feet.  Inside is loud, bright, too loud, too bright, my turn to fumble for a debit card, then back out into the night.

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The milkshakes last the whole way back.  Her music still plays, but now we can talk… almost.  A word here and there, small musings on the day as the lanes multiply and the strings of green fan out before us.  Our road.  Fourteen miles that couldn’t possibly belong to anyone but us.  At least for tonight.