Song: “In My Head” by Far Places

I would’ve looked up the address for her, but she insisted. She said it’d only be a second—it’d be fine.

We get home. We make tea. We read by the fireplace. We go to bed. We repeat it all the next morning and every day for the rest of our lives.

She makes fun of my gray hairs; I point out the deepening smile lines framing her hazel eyes.

That was the plan, and sure, sometimes we canceled dinner plans in favor of sweatpants and a pint of ice cream, but this was different. This was a promise, a guarantee—we’d sworn in front of the church, for Christ’s sake.

Her hazel eyes are staring at me now, but there are no smile lines. There will never be any smile lines—not for her, and certainly not for me.

A whining drone overtakes the shrill ringing in my ears, and it’s a few moments before I place it. I remember last Sunday afternoon. We’d been driving to the grocery store when some jerk in a jacked-up pickup truck cut us off; she’d really laid into the horn then.

She’s laying into it now, too.

The left side of her face is pressed against the steering wheel, and her cheek is all squished like when she comes home from a long day, jumps up next to me on the couch, and buries her face in my shoulder.

But there’s blood now. In her hair, on her shirt, trickling down the side of her face.

I smell smoke, but it’s not like a barbecue or burnt toast. It’s thick with gasoline. I cough a little and spray little red droplets on the inside of my elbow.

There’s pressure on my shoulder, then, and I look to see someone’s hand. Their fingernails are freshly manicured. Maybe they shouldn’t be exposing the fresh paint to this mess. That’s a good $20 down the drain—$30 if it’s gel.

They start to pull me out of the shattered passenger window.

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