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Across the street, a midnight-blue pickup is parked under a streetlight.
The cabin is dark, but the headlights of an oncoming car let me see the driver. Even at a distance, I can tell he’s grabbing the wheel with unnatural tension. As if sensing my gaze on him, his head swivels to the side and our eyes meet.
John’s are brimming with sorrow, regret, and—guilt. Time stops for a second. A million unspoken questions pass between us. I look at my boyfriend. I know him. I know he loves me. So why is he doing this?
Why are you doing this? I ask him telepathically.
I see his resolution waver. For a moment, I think he’s about to get out of that damn truck and come hug me. But then the oncoming car passes between us, breaking our eye contact, and the next thing I know, the headlights of Johnny’s pickup are on and he’s pulling off the street.
“No!”
I gather my dress up and run after him. Johnny must see me in the rearview mirror. He’ll stop now. He’ll stop any minute.
“Johnny, wait,” I scream at the top of my lungs, chasing after the car. “Johnny.”
But the pickup keeps gaining on me and soon disappears into the night.
“Johnny.”
That’s when I realize I’m screaming and crying.
I collapse in the middle of the street and sit on the concrete, my pretty dress a pool of sadness around me.
The road stays empty after that. There’s no traffic, but after a while—I couldn’t tell how long—a police car stops by. Someone must’ve called them.
“Miss, are you all right?” a police officer asks me.
I look up at him, shaking my head, fresh tears running down my cheeks. “No,” I wail.
“What happened?”
“My boyfriend dumped me.”
The officer’s expression switches from worried to sort of exasperated. He looks at his colleague.
“Is she intoxicated?” the other man asks.
“No, just a teenager,” he responds, gently grabbing my arm and pulling me up from the concrete. “Come on, miss, you can’t sit on the street all night.”
He steers me toward their car. “Is there an address we can take you to?”
I give them my home address.
Ten minutes later, we’re pulling up in front of my house. I hate that the first thing I do as I get out of the police car is to check the neighbor’s driveway for John’s pickup. But the truck is nowhere to be seen. Wherever he went, he made sure I couldn’t follow.
Present Day
“And you never saw him after that night?” Blake asks me once I’m done sharing.
“Nope. He skipped graduation and joined the peace corps for the summer to make sure we wouldn’t see each other again.” I shake my head, cradling my mug. We’re on my couch, nursing two matcha teas. “And then he was off to Stanford, thousands of miles away.”
I take a sip of my tea.
“First time I saw him was ten days ago when he…”
“Took a stroll in your lady parts?”
“That.”
