What the hell is going on?
I can’t see out my windshield because the snow is coming down harder and faster.
I look out my window.
Then the passenger side window.
Traffic in all three lanes has come to a complete stop.
I roll down the driver’s side window and stick my head out, looking behind me. There is at least a mile of cars backed up behind me. I shift and face forward. There has to be two miles of cars stopped in front of me.
Ugh.
There must be some kind of accident.
Figures.
Just my luck.
I stare at the time on my phone. It’s 8:00 pm. I’m still a good two and a half hours away from home. Switching my phone off airplane mode, after a minute I’m bombarded with texts and missed calls.
Two texts from Ella.
Where you at sweet bottom?
No seriously. Text me back I’m getting worried.
Three missed calls from my mother.
And three voicemails.
The funny thing about my mother is that she leaves me the same voicemail every time she calls. “Oh…” her light, feathery voice trails off. “It’s me. Call me back.”
She sent me a text, too. My mother never texts. It seriously takes her ten minutes to type out one word.
Sadie Marie! Call me back! I’m worried sick.
I call her first so she doesn’t panic.
The phone rings once.
Twice.
“Sadie,” she gasps. “Where are you? Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me back?” She rants for five more minutes and I pull the phone away from my ear, wincing as her voice becomes more shrill and high-pitched.
“Mom,” I say first, in a normal tone. She continues and I raise my voice, “Mom!” The other end goes quiet. “Calm down. I am fine.”
“Where are you?”
“Somewhere in Pennsylvania.”
“Where at in Pennsylvania?”
I glance out the windows in search of sign. There isn’t one. “I’m not quite sure exactly.”
“What do you mean you’re not sure?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. I’m not sure. There are no signs or anything.” I check my GPS. “I just know that I’m about two and a half hours away from home.”
“Well, what’s going on?”
“Apparently there is some kind of accident and traffic is backed up.”
“How bad is it?” she inquires.
“I don’t know,” I respond. “It’s at least a mile up the road.”
My phone vibrates against my palm. The battery is at 20%. If I want to make it home and not be stranded without cellular service I need to charge it.
“Mom, I gotta go.” I release a quick breath. “My phone is gonna die.”
“Okay,” she sighs. “I’m just glad you’re safe. Call me on your way home.”
“I will,” I assure her.
“Bye.”
The phone clicks and I send Ella a text before plugging my phone into the charger.
Yo. Yo. Ell…Ell…Ella. I’m fine sweets. Just stuck in a little traffic.
I plug my phone in and get a quick reply.
Oh snap. That sucks. Glad you’re okay though. I’m not staying at the house tonight, but text me when you get home.
I text her back.
Sure thing.
Every couple days, Ella spends the night at her boyfriend Melvin’s house. Their story is classic and adorable.
High school sweethearts.
Separated by time.
Different life plans.
But they never lost touch.
That fierce, flaming fire of love burning inside of their hearts never went out. Their relationship is beautiful and real. It’s crazy to me how things that seem meant to be work out. When Ella moved back they picked up right where they left off when she moved away six years ago.
And they’re an epic pairing for sure.
Both like to hunt.
Build things.
Fix things.
Spend time outdoors.
Melvin likes to joke that we share custody of Ella. It’s funny because we kinda do.
There are times where I’m envious of their relationship. I don’t get jealous. Personally, I think it’s an unattractive quality, but I have moments where I wish I had someone like Melvin who shared interests similar to mine. I happen to think it would be a lot more fun living in your own, little world if you have someone you’re compatible with living there too.
~ ~ ~
Thirty minutes passes.
Then an hour.
I’m approaching the hour and a half mark and traffic is still at a stand-still. I’ve been to turning my car on and off to preserve gas and I’ve reached the point where I’m getting frustrated.
And exhausted.
And a little stir-crazy.
Out the driver’s side window I see a few people getting out of their cars and decide it might be a good idea to stretch my legs for a bit.
Maybe roam around.
Wander through the lanes of parked cars.
Find out what is really going on.
Unfastening my seat belt, I leave my keys in the ignition and open my door. I meander out onto the slick road, almost losing my balance, but catch myself on the side of my car. For a second, I stare at the dark grey paint job admiring the way the moonlight dances off the roof. In certain spots the metallic specs in the paint glimmer.
Then I hear a deep, gruff voice shout, “Hey!” Startled, I whip around and almost wipe out again when a man beside me clutches onto my forearm. “Easy.” He lowers his voice. “You almost bit some serious curb there.” There a chuckle in his voice and the deep register of his tone is warm and inviting. He releases my arm and backs away from me. Once he’s a few steps away I get a good look at his face.
Heart-shaped face.
Almond skin tone.
Chocolate brown hair.
With the deepest darkest set of blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
His eyes probe into my mine and I flinch, feeling a little unsettled. This man is attractive and he’s making me nervous. I drop my gaze and play with my fingers. “Looks like you’re a good guy to have around in slippery situations.”
I’ve always been the wall-flower type. I’m not good interacting with people I don’t know. Men especially. I can’t really explain it. My friends like to say I’m more reserved. It takes me forever to really open up.
He lets out a throaty laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”
My eyes sweep over him from head to toe. He’s tall, but not too tall. Maybe 6’0 at the most. He’s got a stalky build. He’s smiling at me and I notice the dimples in his full cherub-like cheeks. His hair is matted down in spots and he’s got sprays of scruff along his jaw line adding a rugged appeal to him.
I give myself a quick glance in the reflection of my car window, making sure I don’t look like too much of a mess. My blonde hair is in a high ponytail, but sticking up in places. My skin looks sallow and I’ve got dark circles under my eyes. Yeah, there’s no helping this situation. So I smooth down a few fly-a-ways and face him, pressing my lips into a half-smile. “Any idea what’s going on up there?” I ask.
“Four car pileup,” he states as he quirks me a grin.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groan. “I’m never going to get home.”
He cocks his head to the side and dips his chin down. “Where’s home?”
I let out a long, ragged breath and kick a snowball at my feet. “About two and half-hours north of here.”
“So,” he says. “What’s a pretty young woman such as yourself doing out on the interstate all by her lonesome?”
I flash him a smile. “Traveling. For work.” I try to lean up against my car casually, hoping I don’t slip again and make myself look like an idiot. “How about you?”
“Same.” He points over his shoulder. “That rig back there is mine.”
I fo
llow his finger to see a big rig. The cab is red and attached to it is a long, rectangular closed off white bed. “What do you haul?”
“Plastic piping.” He rolls his eyes and smirks. “I know glamorous, right?”
This guy is funny. I’m digging it. “So glamorous,” I laugh. Still, I’m not into having a let’s get to know each other too personally conversation so I change the subject. “How long do you think traffic will be backed up? Do you have any idea?”
“Honestly, don’t. If I had to estimate, I’d say maybe another hour. Two tops.”
Today just isn’t my day. “Great. Just great.”
“I’ve got a thermos of hot chocolate in my truck. You’re welcome to join me for a cup if you’d like,” he offers.
I decline instantly, “No. I’m just going get back in my car, but thank you for the offer.” My mind is screaming stranger danger, stranger danger, stranger danger.
He turns to walk away, but stops tossing a mega-watt smile over his shoulder. “It still stands if you change your mind.”
I open my door. “Thanks anyway.” I won’t.
Then I watch him walk away as I get back into my car.
Chapter Five
A breath of icy air seeps through my windows. I shiver and grab a few articles of clothing from my back seat, placing them on my lap. Anyone who really knows me knows that I live out of my car. Mostly because I’m always on the go.
There’s no place home, sure, but there are days where I get a little stir crazy.
Days where I need to break out of my reclusive shell.
Moments where I need to feel free.
Like a bird.
Great song BTW.
In fact I’ve had visions of myself, driving along the interstate in a jeep without the hard-top, blasting Free Bird as loud as possible.
I can almost feel the wind whipping through my hair.
Bask in the cool breeze as it dances across my skin.
Just thinking it about has a liberating effect on me.
In fact, in the last hour, I feel like I’ve been thinking too much in general. My mind is like a web browser with hundreds of different tabs opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing. I press two fingers from each hand into my temples and rotate counter-clockwise.
I wish I could shut my brain off.
I wish I could rewind time and erase my past.
I wish I could take back the hurt, the betrayal.
More words fog up my clear thoughts so now everything inside of me is over-cast instead of bright and sunny.
I don’t love you anymore.
Five words.
One very powerful message.
I.
Don’t.
Love.
You.
Anymore.
When I first heard the words leave my ex’s lips, I thought he might be lying.
Maybe trying to push me away.
Possibly even trying to be cruel.
I thought that maybe he was trying to hurt me in his own way to mask the pain inside of himself. I think back to a nursery rhyme from my childhood that implies that words can never hurt us.
Who made up that rhyme? It’s a lie. A filthy, falsehood.
Because words…
They do hurt.
They burn, sting, and throb.
Cut, slash, and impale.
They tear at the flesh surrounding your heart cavity until there’s nothing left but a gaping hole.
They stab at a person’s brain and remind them that they’ve been spoken.
Until finally…
They leave scars.
Scars don’t heal. They stay with you, reminding you that even emotional wounds never go away. Yeah, maybe you’ll eventually forget about them.
Go on with your life.
Learn to overcome them.
But as you travel along the long, winding road called life, there will be reminders planted everywhere you go. Most of all I ask myself why in the hell I’m still thinking about my ex? I should kick the thought of him to the curb.
But I can’t.
Even though I should I won’t.
My brain likes to flash those five torturous words through my mind at the exact moment I seem to be starting to forget about them.
It doesn’t matter where I am.
What I’m doing.
Who I’m with.
I hear his gritty, baritone voice and I hear him say,
I don’t love you anymore.
The same thing always happens when I hear his words in my mind.
My heart ignites, blowing up and raging, burning, burning, burning like a bonfire surrounded by a plethora of party goers.
The trembling begins and I have to leave if I’m in a public place because if I’m holding something I always drop it.
You break it, you bought it.
This has happened more times than I can count.
Finally, my tear ducts kick into over drive and I’m watering the floor beneath my feet like a sprinkler over fresh cut grass.
I don’t love you anymore.
Suddenly, I have a moment of clarity when I realize I’m dwelling too much on my past. The past is the past after all, you can’t re-write it. There’s no giant eraser and you can’t erase portions of it to make changes. The only thing you can do is plow ahead, learn from the mistakes of your past and make changes as you go. If you want to that is. I happen to be the type of person that likes to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them.
I’m brought back to the now when my teeth start chattering. I’m wearing a hoodie and pea coat, but the cold still bleeds through the layers of my clothing. I pump warmth into my arms then decide to turn my car back on.
Over the last couple hours, I’ve been turning it on and off to try and preserve the half of tank of gas I have left in my tank. Ella tells me all the time that I’m wasting more gas by turning my car on and off. I don’t know how true that is. All I know is that when my car was on and I noticed the needle dipping dangerously close to being under the half of a tank mark, I panicked and shut off the engine.
Freezing in half an hour intervals, in my opinion, is much better than running out of gas on the interstate, in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania.
Chapter Six
Another hour down and I’m in full panic mode.
“Are you serious?” I groan as I fiddle with my ignition. “You have got to be kidding me! You have got to be kidding me!”
Click.
Click.
Click.
Then there’s a soft humming.
Resting my head against my steering column I let out a frustrated sigh. I turn the ignition over again, listening to the soft clicking from somewhere inside of the engine. My damn car won’t start. Beautiful. Just beautiful. I assume that maybe my battery might be dead, but then again, I don’t know very much about cars in general. Turning on my interior light, I stretch my left arm, fingers shaking and pop what I think is my hood.
I’m trying my best not to let my emotions overwhelm me.
I’m trying with everything I have not to turn into a shrieking babbling mess.
In my head I keep chanting…
Keep calm.
Deep breaths.
There are hundreds of people surrounding you. If you need help, someone will help you.
I fling my seatbelt over my shoulder and open my door in a hurry. Tears swell in my eyes and I’m thinking, hoping, praying that I can figure out the root of the problem. I realize that that’s most likely not going to happen when I dash out onto the road and notice that I popped my trunk instead of my hood. I slam the trunk and with a few quick steps, I rush over to my door, locate the hood latch, slip my fingers underneath and pull up. I hear the faint popping noise and make my way to the front of the car.
Reaching underneath the hood, I try to lift it up, but there’s something underneath keeping me from doing so. There’s a metal thingy of some sort locking my hood and I can’t get
a good grasp on it to unlock it. Like I said before, because I know zip, zilch, nada about cars.
Damn it!
Damn it!
The chill in the air seeps through my clothes and I pump warmth into my arms as I turn and rest my back against the hood. Fear pumps through me and I begin to assume the worst. Traffic is going to start moving any minute. Just my luck. Then I’ll be stranded out here. I’ll never get home.
The tears start trickling down my cheek. My cheeks blaze with warmth. My nose runs and the sniffling begins. I take deep breaths to keep the sobs from creeping out of my throat, but it’s not working.
They slip…
Slide.
Crawl up my esophagus until I’m choking on them.
I lose my cool in situations where I don’t know what I’m doing. Or in situations where I don’t know how to fix what is broken. I am a fixer. I consider this a flaw more than anything because some things, some circumstances, and some situations are meant to be broken.
But…
My car doesn’t fall into any of those categories.
I wipe my nose with the sleeve of my coat, throw my head back and let out a long frustrated sigh. Springs of air curl from my mouth and I stare at them in a daze as they disappear into the night sky.
“Is there something wrong?”
I thumb the wetness from under my eyes and wipe my hands on the side of my coat. “My car,” I mumble as I turn to face the truck driver from earlier. I clear my throat. “It won’t start.”
He flashes me a smug grin then shakes his head. “Women and cars. Not a good combination.”
I laugh, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking that if Ella were here she’d know what to do. That woman is wicked with a wrench.
He strolls to the front of the car. “Did you pop the hood?”
“Um…kind of.”
“Kind of?” There’s a questioning tone to his deep voice. Then he laughs a pleasant, jovial kind of laugh that makes me smile. “How do you kind of pop the hood to your car?”