Fell in Love at the Traffic Light

Donna

I'm running late for work, and it's lightly raining. Something fundamental on the underside of the car squeals as I pull up to the stop light.

I take my hands off the steering wheel to lift and bite into my blueberry muffin. I've got the wax wrapper spread in my lap, but some crumbs fall between my legs anyway. I do a sustained pelvic thrust and try to sweep the crumbs out from underneath me before they melt into and stain the ass of my pants.

Glancing out the passenger side, I see a girl in a Honda Civic, angelic and orderly, looking at me through the raindrops on her window and the raindrops on mine. I grin, embarrassed. She smirks. She's beautiful.

I settle back into my seat and sip my coffee. The stop light is taking forever. I self-consciously avoid looking at the girl again. As the light turns green, I give in and peek over. She's looking down at her phone.

There are at least a dozen new files waiting for me at work. Linda will sneer at my being late. She's never liked me, and I don't need to give her incentive to be even more pissy at me. For sure the Johnson account needs attention. And they better have fixed that stupid flickering bulb in the Ideaspace, I can't even think when I'm in there.

I'm just getting the car up to speed when the next light turns yellow. I think about plowing through it, but the cops are everywhere this morning. I press the brakes, and when I look over, next to me again is that girl. She has short blonde hair, blue eyes, and a wistful pout. She smiles at me. I'm probably imagining it.

I swallow hard. And somehow, momentarily, I'm seized from nowhere by an uncharacteristic boldness. I roll down the passenger-side window and start waving wildly to get her attention, aware that I only have a small window of time. She notices and frowns at me. I start pointing downward to get her to roll down her window. She does, and cocks her head at me like a puppy, and squints. Raindrops are falling on her forearm.

"You're amazing!" I yell stupidly, and a little too loudly for the distance. "Can I have your number?" Her face makes an expression I can't quite figure out, as if she's both curious and disappointed.

She stares but says, "Yeah, okay," flatly. She watches me and says nothing, waiting for me to figure out what to do next. It takes a couple seconds, but I pull out my phone and clumsily open my Contacts list. She says, "Donna. 7-0-3..." I type the area code. "5-5-5..." Got it. I mess it up, but I fix it quickly. "0-1" okay. "9... the light's green." She shrugs and accelerates. The car behind me honks. I shift, and the rest of my muffin falls to the floor.

I walk into work damp and late. Linda tells me I look good today. She hates me so much.

At lunch, I wonder. Donna, probably not her real name, gave me most of a number, probably not a real number. But I wonder. It's probably silly, but I decide to text every variation from 703-555-0190 to 703-555-0199 and ask for her by name.

Almost immediately, I get a reply, "Blocking scammer." I feel foolish. But hours later, as I've almost fallen asleep, I get another text. "Hey, you."

I ask her to meet me at the movie theater on Saturday for a matinee, but when she arrives, she insists we go to a thrift store nearby instead. I stand in a corner while she rummages through a cardboard box filled with wire, keys, doll-heads and trinkets, audibly laughing. Her nails are painted orange. She has a project planned for each thing she purchases.

At Maison du Fleuve, she orders a salad but makes me choose the poached rockfish with fennel and onions, then eats most of it. When I reach to touch her hand, I jostle a ramekin of roasted garlic butter and spill some onto the tablecloth. She calls me "Butterfingers" for the rest of the night. I'm smitten.

She's whip-smart and spirited, and she doesn't know she's too good for me. I make the conscious effort to not inform her. Wednesday on a walk under the moon, we kiss in the cold by the side of the pond where the whooper swans live.

She dances when she walks. She's never still. When we're close, her cheeks and neck and chest go flush. It turns me on so much.

As we're moving her things into my apartment, I notice my old keepsake box, tan and wooden with a latch but no lock. It's filled with my notes, love-letters, and photos from high-school and college, not things I ever think about. I cover the box up with an old blanket to conceal it.

We share the bills but argue over the temperature. When I get home, the entire place is cold as a morgue. She thoughtfully learns to reset the thermostat to the temperature I like, but waits until a few minutes before I walk in. The apartment smells like glue. I like it. But she uses some kind of clumpy sludge that sticks to the sides of the metal sink, and I worry that it will clog the plumbing.

She makes love with a channeled ferocity, her eyes wide and lusty as if imagining riches just beyond some horizon.

At my job, I get a promotion and raise, but the work is more demanding. It's all I can think about sometimes. I come home tired. Her job is less stressful, and she has energy still to craft things when she gets home. I unwind in my big leather chair, scrolling on my phone, and we listen to music together while she creates.

A workmate in Marketing challenges me to sign up for a massive multiplayer online game called Chronicles. I'm not so into it at first, but I start to level up, and I play it when I can't sleep. She lies facing away from me, pushing the back of her body up against my side, sleeping in the blue light.

She wins third place in the Juniper Fold poetry competition. She's excited about being published in their anthology. I tell her I'm very proud of her. I realize she's never shown me her writing. I look the competition up, and it seems to not be a scam.

While in Daytona on vacation, we get drunk on Mai Tais as a steel drum band plays. She dances, but I'm shy. I see how men look at her as she moves. They arch their bodies toward her aggressively and shine their teeth. That night, we have a threesome with a musician named Clarence in a musty hotel room. He leaves early, and through a grimy window, I watch the sun come up behind a palm tree. A failing air-conditioner rattles and labors. We never speak of this again.

Corporate is restructuring, and we're all worrying about layoffs. I think I'm essential and safe, but you can't know. Everyone is staying late now, trying to prove themselves. We eat bad pizza and are getting sick of each other. I'm starting to know my co-workers by smell.

"We used to give each other little gifts," I think one night as I start awake, then sink back into sleep. The apartment has that acrid glue smell I don't like. I breathe it in all night.

One late afternoon at work, I see Linda coming down the hallway to our section. My team members aren't around. She walks up to me, looking dour and unforgiving, and asks me to come with her. I follow her, confused, as she leads me into a supply closet. She never looks at my face as she unzips my pants with her fingers, then descends to her knees and gives me a blowjob. I don't stop her. I've always wanted it. We hate each other so much.

Linda is fired during the first round of layoffs. I feel like my guilt shows like a greasy stain.

The apartment is cold when I come in, and I have to fix the thermostat myself. She's decided to go on vacation with her friend Sarah next month. I snap at her often now, blaming work. I play my game for thirty minutes at a time while sitting on the toilet. Chronicles: Shadow Tactician. She hasn't crafted in two months, only written. Long pieces, whose progress I forget to make a note to remember to ask about.

She's gone for five days, and I give the apartment a deep cleaning. In the closet, I find a black faux-leather bag, and inside, there's a diary. I open it to the back and start to read the last entry. She is worried about her brother. I slam the diary closed before I can read more. I failed the test.

Nothing I eat has any taste, unless it's sweet. That night, I buy and eat half a strawberry cheesecake.

When she returns from California, she's tan and relaxed. She's changed the way she puts on her makeup. But her smile is reassuring. She takes me to bed immediately, and we make love twice. As I hold her on the wet mattress, listening to the hot wind outside the window, I feel happy for the first time in months. I've missed this. It's her that makes me feel alive, she's the best thing in my life, and sometimes I'm such a fool. I tell her I'm her fool as I breathe in her hair. I fall asleep wrapped around her.

Over scrambled eggs with cheese and chives, she tells me she needs to find her own way, but she doesn't want to fight. She's made up her mind, and she's moving in with Sarah. It's not my fault, she says. People grow in different directions. I smash my plate to the floor.

I challenge myself to see just how poor a job I can do at work and stay employed. Weeks pass before Dick sits me down to ask whether I believe my performance is the best I'm capable of.

She tells her friends I was abusive to her. Why would she say that? Why would they believe that? On Instagram, I see she is smiling in a selfie at The Colosseum in Rome.

I used to have friends, but they're all couples now with kids. I don't want to drink, but I go to the bar and order a Sprite with a lime wedge in it, and I watch other people in the mirror as they drink. An old guy tries to talk to me about why the deep state has required sneakers be made in Vietnam. I laugh to myself. I feel better, staring at the mutants in the mirror, enjoying their slow-motion suicide party. I catch a glimpse of my shit-eating grin reflected in the glass. I've never been so happy, I tell myself.

My character in Chronicles has advanced a lot. Most of the challenges are simple for me now. I have one of the higher-leveled characters in the world. Probably. For fun, I trick the noobs, leading them into a secret arena and destroying them, easily.

I'm running late for work, and it's lightly raining. It's almost time to have the brakes done again.

I'm trying to eat a sausage breakfast sandwich, but it's overcooked and dry. Every mouthful I bite off is a chore, taking a full minute to chew and swallow. I must look like a rodent with its cheeks stuffed with nuts.

Glancing out the passenger side window, I see a girl beside me in the next car, with straight, dark hair and black pearl eyes, witchy and chaotic. She's looking over at me as I struggle. I grin, embarrassed. She smirks. She's beautiful.

Neil Oldman love and relationship fiction for the Daydream Misfit blog

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