As she turned the corner, the light was already turning yellow. There was no way she was going to make it. She slowed down gradually. If she remembered anything her dad had told her about driving, it was that speeding up to a red light was a waste of time and gas.

She had her hand out the window of her little black pickup. It was a beautiful spring day in Minnesota. She turned up the radio as a Taylor Swift song started. She impatiently tapped her left foot on the floorboard as she waited for the only light in town to change. Just by chance, she happened to turn her head to the left.

It took her a few seconds to realize who it was. He had gotten a new car since the last time she had been home. His hair was a bit longer, but she could tell that he still had that same look in his blue eyes as they made contact with her own green ones.

He started pulling forward. There was a loud honk from the car behind her. The light has changed. She shot forward (also a waste of gas) and followed his car. He took a left at the gas station as she continued on towards Target.

She pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later. She sat there for a minute, unable to move. She knew what that look meant; he had given it to her many times before. She reacted exactly the same way even after all this time. She took a deep breath in. She was imagining it. Obviously. There was no way that look could mean the same as it once had. Too much time had passed. Too many people had gotten in between them. She shook off the feeling and walked into Target.


She returned to her car twenty minutes later with all the items on the list (except for the one that she needed the most, but she wouldn’t realize that until she got all the way back home). She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw his car parked next to hers. Upon closer inspection, she realized he was sitting inside it.

She walked up to his door. He looked up at her. This time, there was no mistaking the look in his eye. She had definitely mistaken it before.

“You don’t love her. You can’t love her,” she said through the window.

“I love her.” She could just barely make out the words. It was as if there was no sound coming out of his mouth at all.

“No. You can’t!”

“I love her. You screwed up.”

“No! No, no, no…”


She woke up saying no over and over again. A feeling of dread washed over her. She had no clue why. She couldn’t even decipher the meaning of the dream. She laid in her bed going over every detail of the dream. She tried hard to remember, but the dream was slipping out of her mind like a handful of sand.

She loved sleep, but it would be so much better if these confusing dreams would stop.