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Ohio summers stay steamy well into September, and the nights tease at cool relief. Stepping out of roller derby practice at the rink, I feel a distinct difference between the sweaty building and the soft outside air.
I’m not the first person to leave, and I’m not the last. I aim for the middle, the sweet spot of opportunity. It needs to be clear that I have nowhere to be. She is still inside and I strain to keep a casual pace that will render me serendipitously available.
While my other team members pull away from the rink, or huddle at the trunks of cars, chatting lightly, I wait, for something. An invitation, a label for my feelings, the courage to be real.
After much effortful delay, after watching her walk out in the middle of a conversation, and go to her junky car, and drive away to her distant life, I leave.
I roll down the windows on the way home, put in a CD, and light a cigarette.
No one I know has this album. That’s easy, though. I don’t know many people. My boyfriend sits at home playing fantasy games with our roommate and their friends. Nothing in me cares to go back there. It’s not me — so what is?
This song is closer than me to anyone. We ride together through the country, taking every stretch of road as it comes.
Just as I turn into the empty town, avoiding home at all costs, I see my phone light up.
It’s him, the infamous, the impossible. Bored, or something. Why does he ever reach for me? It’s my obsession to make up the answer. But I say yeah, meet me here.
Like me, he’s a cruiser. He drives to think, he listens to his CDs, he stays up late. He’s in front of me in ten minutes.
“Hey you,” he says, leaning into the open window.
“Can I play you a song?” I ask.
“Yeah,” and he gets into the passenger’s seat.
I drive us a mile down the road, where there is a giant sunflower field that’s featured every year in hundreds of family photos and engagement announcements. The peak of its season has passed, and the tired flowers droop heavy all around us. I park my car facing north and start the CD from the beginning.
It’s unusual, but we don’t talk. He doesn’t perform, and neither do I. He doesn’t milk me for flattery. I don’t fumble around for interesting statements. We just listen, very together, and look out the windshield.
He reaches over and place his hand on the back of my neck, tenderly. He’s never done this. I know it’s just the song. I’m relieved that someone else has heard it.