She had a silver car.
Here’s how you know someone has gotten to you: when, a week, or a month, or a year (or more) after they’ve left your life, you do a double-take every time you drive past a car that could be hers.
Take a car, any car—any silver car—and it could be her. Even, as it approaches, you know it isn’t, couldn’t be her, you still look. Just to make sure. Just in case. Because (you think) the one time you don’t look up, you’ll miss her.
And?
And the spell will be broken; it’s like no longer wanting—or needing—to say your prayers before bed, once you lose the desire to believe, the magic disappears, faith dies. And? And faith in all things will die (eventually, inevitably) so you want to hold on as long as you can, hang on to all the things you can’t ever control, because those are the secrets you never want to solve. Once you understand what you’re seeing in the mirror, suddenly it’s all so much polished sand, it’s uncomplicated, explicable by science.
And so: even if you are in a different city, a different state, you should never not look, never not allow yourself to hope, because there’s always the chance that it could be her. Could be love.
*Excerpted from my novel Not To Mention a Nice Life, available June 17.
