I needed noise, not conversation.
I pulled up my favorite playlist, “Soundtrack to your Quarter-Life Crisis,” and let the opening chords of an early-2000s pop anthem fill the car.
As I merged onto the highway, I started cataloguing this evening’s lessons:
Never trust men who use the phrases “low-key” or “family thing” without additional context.
Never leave the house without a book or toy of some kind—traditional dating etiquette be damned.
Try not to confuse being open-minded with ignoring every internal alarm bell just because he holds the door open and uses conditioner.
By mile five, I’d almost convinced myself this would make a funny story later, when the dashboard lights started flickering like the Christmas lights I still hadn’t gotten around to taking down.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.
The engine sputtered in response, a metallic cough that made my stomach drop.
“You motherfucking cunt biscuit.”
It sounded harsh, sure, but I’d once read an article that said people who cursed regularly had higher verbal intelligence. So really, I wasn’t losing my temper—I was demonstrating advanced linguistic processing under stress.
Take that, college.
One long, wheezing sigh and then silence. The car lurched once, twice, before coasting to a pitiful stop on the shoulder.
I turned the key again, hoping that maybe the engine just needed a gentle nudge rather than divine intervention. It made a noise somewhere between a cough and a death rattle. Apparently, dying was the theme for this evening’s dating misadventure.
I let my forehead drop against the steering wheel. “Great. Love this for me.”
A few cars whooshed past on the highway, their taillights glowing like little red reminders that everyone else’s night was going better than mine. I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and stepped out into the cold.
The icy wind slapped my skin, slicing through the thin material of my tights as I popped the hood and stared into the steam curling around the tangle of metal and wires.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered, crossing my arms. “You’re the one who quit.”
Who was I kidding? I was the common denominator in all my own disasters. In just one year, I’d gone from double majoring in business administration and environmental science at a top-tier liberal arts college to working part-time at my brother’s girlfriend’s bookstore and living rent-free in his spare townhouse.
Jared had offered to buy me a new car when I’d moved to Rose City. “A reliable one,” he’d said, “with safety features and heated seats.”
But no, I’d insisted on doing it myself, on proving I wasn’t just Jared’s freeloading sister. Which was how I’d ended up buying a used clunker off Facebook Marketplace that had beenproudly advertised as “having character” and “great mileage.” Apparently, that was code for “will die spectacularly during moments of personal growth.”
Still, I wasn’t helpless. I’d taken an entire weekend workshop on basic car maintenance last spring, and I had the certificate of completion displayed on my fridge to prove it.
“Okay,” I said, removing my headband and gathering my hair up into a messy bun atop my head. “I can do this.”
I grabbed my flashlight from the glove box, braced myself against the cold, and got to work. If tonight had taught me anything, it was that I could survive bad dates, worse funerals, and now, apparently, my own damn engine.
And maybe that was its own kind of win.
Bennett
Damn, it felt good to be back in Oregon. The land of rain, fog, and a craft brewery on every corner.
It was a far cry from my hometown of Flag, Indiana, a place so small that the liquor store doubled as a post office—with a tanning bed in the back—and where it was nearly impossible to miss out on Sunday service without somebody ratting you out to your mother. I’d spent eighteen years there dreaming about getting out, and most days, I still couldn’t believe I had.
I loved my family, I really did. But two weeks crammed into my parents’ two-bedroom bungalow had been a special kind of endurance test.
Between my mom blasting holiday music on a twenty-four-hour loop, the Marvel movie marathon with my nephews—more than 124 hours of film and television—and my dad’s constant complaining about whatever inflatable eyesore our neighbor, Janette, had added to her collection of holiday lawn decor, it was safe to say that I’d been about one Christmas carol away from using Janette’s inflatable Santa to make my escape down the Ohio River and hope for the best.
