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Love Story Sample

Broken Glass

I don’t think there is a problem that can’t be solved by a gas station map. Death, debt, divorce, guilt, whenever things lose their comfort, I’ve always been the ?irst to pack up and go. It’s a survival technique, you know. Its not an excuse and it doesn’t make any of this any better. But it’s in my blood. I can feel it rattling around in there, scraping against my skin, a soft panic. Looking back it’s easy to color myself as a villain, and maybe I am. But I promise, at the time, it felt like my only option. I always tighten my tie and start a new promising, this time I’ll ?inally settle down. This time I’ll ?ind the strength to stay around, this time it will be different. But it’s never long before I hit the road.

I write honestly when I say despite all that, nothing has ever made me stay as long as you did. Nothing. And I promise I fought my demons with everything I had. But I couldn’t ask you to carry me through all that pain. So I waited until you were asleep and I packed up my old truck.

We were running on nothing but air and adrenaline that night. I was. Headlights swinging in the rain, our sneakers squeaking on the slick road, as we danced around the car, Baby, we were a force pulled out by fate. I had never been more sure of anything. We belonged together and we belonged elsewhere. I bought a map and a tank of gas. I wanted to run away with you.

You humored me at first. It felt like the cruelest lie in the world in the years that followed. But now, I guess, I ought to thank you for that. To feel limitless for those precious hours. I’d take a few hours over never at all.

You packed a bag. You left a note. You climbed into my front seat. We pulled into a diner 300 miles out. I bought you a coffee and you told me you loved me and that we’d get married out in the forest somewhere. Just you and me swaying under those bent and broken trees. And I fell in love with the idea – maybe you did to – that we were a haven.

You started crying 500 miles out, you said we had made a mistake, that all I was chasing out here were fantasies and thunderstorms, and that you couldn’t live like that. That you couldn’t live with me.

I pulled over, brought a motel room, promised you it was just the hour, that it was just a mindset. That tomorrow in the morning we would wake up new. But when I woke up you were gone.

You got a taxi back to town, It must have cost you all your savings. Bet I was the most expensive mistake of your life. I hope I was. You don’t deserve any more mistakes.

 

 

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