The sun hung low, turning the cracked asphalt into a bumpy trail of gold. She stood outside a roadside diner, its neon sign buzzing half-dead in the heat. EATS, it promised, though the “S” flickered as if it had second thoughts.
She wasn’t waiting for anyone. That was the thing. People always thought a girl alone was waiting for something—a ride, a man, a better life. But she had nowhere to be, and she liked it that way.
She sipped a lukewarm Coke and watched the trucks howl past. She imagined their drivers, men with faces creased like old maps that had been folded and unfolded many times from living between gas stations and motels. Sometimes she wanted to be one of them. Other times, she wanted to be the road itself, a long whispered promise, leading to places unknown.
A man came out of the diner, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at her like he might say something. She beat him to it.
“I ain’t waiting,” she said.
He blinked, like she’d read his mind. Then he nodded, tipped his hat, and walked to his truck.
She finished her Coke and tossed the bottle into the dust. Then she picked a direction and started walking.
She ran her fingers along the seam of her shorts, feeling the fray, the looseness of things. That was the trick—letting them unravel without trying to stitch them back too soon. Some people spent their whole lives patching up holes, waiting to be whole before they moved. She wasn’t one of them.
A truck roared past, kicking up dust. In its wake, the air smelled of asphalt and old dreams. She breathed it in. She thought about the road, about how it never asked where she had been. It only carried her forward.
And forward was enough.