When I first see you, it looks like you are driving a 1997 Something or other. It’s one of those cars that you have probably seen on the road a million times, but now faced with actually naming it you couldn’t imagine even the oddest moniker for it.
I can see you in my rear view mirror so any hope of figuring out the type of car you drive outside of the brand, which I can determine at the very least is foreign, is null. I watch you for a moment secure in the fact that my sunglasses are keeping me secret.
Your hair is the perfect shade of brown and it is side parted, something that I didn’t think was even in style anymore but you manage to pull off with the grace, style and class. I wonder what it would be like to be sitting in your car, along for the ride and occasionally making halfhearted attempts to change the radio from the soft rock station to something a bit more edgy.
As I continue to watch you, my foot eases off the accelerator inadvertently and you glide closer to me like a butterfly. I wonder if you will pass me, annoyed at my speed, but you don’t. You continue to travel at my pace and I feel as if you are playing the game with me.
Your front fender is dented in quite a bit and I laugh a little to myself. The shittiness of your car is not lost on me as I suspect it is not lost on you as well. At this point I can’t tell what fascinates me more, the fact that you are such a genuine beauty driving a beater or the fact that the car is in such bad shape that it can even keep up with mine.
Your face is expressionless. I smile and lean my head in such a way that I imagine you can see it through my side mirror, but your face remains solemn. The only reason I can imagine myself with you is because of the car you drive. I am probably no match for your intelligence or sexual prowess, but your jalopy gives me just enough hope to imagine myself waving you down and in some half awkward, half creepy way ask you out.
You would be put off at first, but then be so taken in the moment that we caravan to the nearest coffee shop and share a few hours finding out all the little details about each other that we no doubt have in common.
The closer we get to my exit I pray that you are going my way to further fuel the delusion that we are meant to be together. I move my car to the far lane and creep up the hill towards my off ramp. You of course don’t follow and continue on a life that has nothing to with me.
Slowly, as I wait for the light to change from a sun-splashed red into a soft and almost indiscernible green, I ease back into my reality. The girl in the shitty car never noticed me and I clearly should never have noticed her. I breathe in a deep and heavy breath. A car harshly pulls up next to me almost instantly. I turn my head ignoring the obvious impossibilities of the moment and desperately peer into the car at my side. She is 70 and equally as distant as you were. I turn up the radio and press down on the gas…
