Dirty Mini Blinds

The fog kept me company on the drive home, along with the awful songs I put in the middle of a mix for someone eight hours away. Only the moon watched me blush as I sat driving and embarrassed. The semitrailers stayed to my right at a steady pace and I kept my cruise control at the tip of my thumb. I smelled of weak coffee, made an hour earlier by a close friend with a new French press, that poured from a secondhand mug onto my decidedly third or fourth hand, hounds tooth, dry clean only skirt. I found this circumstance suitably typical, as everything I own has a trace of coffee, somewhere.

Two hours from my apartment to my home is not a long time, but long enough to wander in thought.

Every single day since then, I've thought about two Friday's ago. The day at the Clicquot Club when the woman in the white pickup truck drove over four tables of people eating on the patio and killed that man. His name was Jerome. Every now and then I imagine the accident in my head, hear the families screaming and crying, see his dead body revealed as the truck is pushed off, and feel Grace holding me as I shake and begin to form tears. Most of the time, I think about how that could of been Grace or Alex or me, but I try not to think that way. We were fortunate. You'll be in the garden, right? Yes, the garden.

Alyssa has not moved in yet. Her belongings are there, but she is not. I spend mornings and most of afternoons in my bed with the sun just peeking through the shades, wishing I were out shining with it. Usually I sleep, but at times I simply lay there.

Tonight, I read every single word Grace wrote about Quito. I was beaming the entire time. At the end of day four I felt just as lonely as I was before I started reading, but more content. I am so thrilled about her life in Ecuador. When she left, I told her she would meet the South American version of Alison, and that they would be best friends. She agreed and said "It will probably be a guy." Es la verdad solomente si él es rubio. Usted es siempre mi mujer de amazonas. Baile para nosotros, por favor mi amor.

And you, you've been so busy making plans, you forgot to put me in them. But maybe that was the both of us, complaining in space.

Alison.