Page 253 of A Taste of Vanilla

The dashboard lights up.

One hundred thirty-two miles to empty.

Fine.

One hundred thirty-two miles may not be as many as I’d like, but it’s one hundred thirty-two miles. That’s math. Science, even. Enough distance for someone absolutely not running away. Just… leaving work aggressively.

In the southern direction.

I start the car, and for a second, I sit and watch the wipers drag across the windshield.

Then I drive.

Not aimlessly, which is probably the issue.

I jump onto I-95 South without a thought. My brain checks out, and my heart takes over.

Baltimore blurs behind me in wet streaks of headlights. The exits change, and the roads widen. Every mile should make me feel more free, but it doesn’t.

Instead, there’s an intense ache in my heart at the fact that I failed at this the first time.

My phone rings before I’m even out of Maryland.

Dev. I let it go to voicemail.

It rings again. Oliver.

I let that go too, because Oliver will ask me what I’m doing in that flat, annoyed voice that will have me turning right back around and coming home if I don’t start sobbing first and get into an accident.

Then Marley calls.

I look at her name on the screen until it disappears.

I hate myself. I hate the rain. I hate that I’m doing this again.

My phone rings, and Marley’s name flashes on the screen again.

I don’t answer.

Instead, I keep driving.

The dashboard says one hundred and eleven miles until empty.

Then ninety-eight.

Then eighty-four.

That’s plenty. Far more than I had last time. I’ll just go a few more miles and pull off at a gas station.

The rain keeps coming harder, and somewhere past the point where turning around would still feel simple, my phone starts losing service in small, irritating patches. A call from Marley comes through and drops before I can even decide not to answer. A text from Dev flashes on the screen containing an unidentifiable number of question marks and a single croissant emoji.

OLIVER

This is not air.

For almost two hours, I drive south, chewing my lip and thinking far too deeply about my actions for someone in the process of doing them.

Because two hours feels like a really strange amount of time to run. It’s long enough to become intentional, but not long enough to be brave. Like I decided to do something drastic on a whim and I’m succeeding.