It's Your Gradual Descent Into A Life You Never Meant

Her bare legs were propped up on the dash, our windows open, our hair becoming dishevelled, but we didn't care. Both my hands were on the wheel, slow and steady, the open road, the tar softening under the sun. Was it midday, one or two? It didn't matter. "I love this song," she smiled, her right arm reaching over to turn up the volume. I smiled too. We were different people. We were people who took road trips and put our legs on the dash and didn't worry that we hadn't applied sunscreen. People who said they loved songs, people who were alive.

This isn't a warning. I am not foreshadowing a dark path here. Our car did not slide right off the melting tar road, swerve too quickly, wrap around a tree, there was no one else out there. Our ending was not tragic, unforeseen, cut short, stolen from us. Like the slicks on the road that appear in the distance as you come over a hill, we were not real, never real, never existed for more than a moment. A moment when the music was playing loud and we thought we might start again, really needed, to just, start again.