12:18 PM JANUARY
The apartment was too quiet. Again.
Not the kind of quiet that soothes. The kind that settles over everything like dust. Not the kind you wipe away. The kind you choke on.
The couch was long gone. Taken in the first wave of the big stuff. Then the mirror from the hallway. The white dresser with the soft-close drawers. Last week it was the Le Creuset pans. I did more of the cooking, but she wanted the French-made designer set.
Today, it had been the framed print of Aspen in winter. She hated the cold, and skiing terrified her, but she loved the après parties and the fashion. The empty wire swung softly on the wall, as if the decision to leave was still in motion.
I stood in the kitchen, holding a mug I hadn’t washed in three days. I wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t been. The fridge hummed like a wasp behind the drywall. The window was cracked open an inch too far, and the January wind sliced through like a reminder.
There was nothing for me to do here.
So I did the only thing that had been keeping me sane the last few weeks.
I went for a run.
One foot. Then the next. Slap. Slap. Breath.
A rhythm, just for me. My shoes hit the pavement like a metronome in a world where time kept shifting speeds. Chelsea passed in a blur of storefronts and glass. I didn’t slow. Didn’t loop back. I kept pushing north, legs chewing distance, mind trying to empty itself of furniture lists and emails I wasn’t responding to and lawyers who kept using the word “amicable” like it was a compliment.
Lawyers. Jessica’s last words to me, over the phone, were that I would receive an email from her lawyer containing the official notification and documentation of the divorce filing. I hadn’t thought about how a divorce should go after years of marriage. But I hadn’t seen her since, and the move-out periods were timed so we wouldn’t overlap. A surgical removal.
I had started running again, consistently, after the first radar bleep of my impending departure from Brian. The week before it became official.
My muscles had been acclimating quickly, remembering their former strength and the motion. My pace quickened each week. Distance climbed. The increasing mileage seemed to replace the decreasing commitments. Ties to my former world, falling away.
The rhythm was the only thing that felt real. The rhythm, and the cold on my lungs. This city never gave anyone space freely, but running carved my own wedge.
Thoughts of her began to drift out.
I had passed the piers long ago. Now I was out beyond Riverside. The sheen faded. Buildings grew blunt. Brick replaced glass. Rusted shutters, graffiti scabs. The wind shifted colder, wilder. I kept running. My thoughts narrowed, the city and my work and her disappearing.
Relief.
My legs were warm now, pace accelerating as I stretched out. I thought of my childhood, running freely in the fields while the cattle ignored me. Nodding donkeys in the distance, daring me to play.
Cedar season. Itchy, sneezy. Dogs that ran without fences, always dirty. Coyotes laughing, barking, howling in the distance. The nighttime silences where the stars and moon felt bright as day.
I was drifting in memory when I stopped cold.
Because there was a relic.
Not a real relic. Just a truck. But something about it made it more than a truck.
Boxy. Crew cab. Two-tone paint job, the glorious forgotten kind modern designers pretend never existed. American steel on four tires, squatting against a row of cracked facades. A FOR SALE sign in the window, marker faded and curling like a dead leaf. Not parked so much as placed. Like it was waiting.
The truck was old. Looked nearly as old as me, but I couldn’t name the model year. I didn’t know trucks. Never needed to. But this one wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in the upper, upper West Side. Not next to a shuttered vape shop and a check-cashing store.
Maybe that’s why I stopped. It reminded me of home. Not the Texas of today, but the Texas of my childhood. Sun-faded driveways and gravel lots. Trucks that just were, like mailboxes or porch lights. Ordinary, reliable, unpretentious. The kind handed down to high school kids after their first 200,000 miles.
It belonged in the world I had left behind. The world before Waypoint. Before Jessica. Before I thought success meant elevation. Before I thought the higher I climbed, the more stable the ground would be.
I walked around it. Fingers skimmed the cold metal, confirming it wasn’t an illusion. A couple of dents near the wheel well. I lingered on their imperfection. The bed was scratched and worn from use. Rear bumper showed spot welds in a couple areas.
Not pretty, but honest. Still here. Still standing. Tangible marks of work like calluses on hands.
Inside the nearest garage bay, a man wiped his hands on a shop towel. Coveralls zipped halfway, sleeves rolled. His eyes met mine with the same look I’d seen a hundred times in counterparty meetings. Wary. Efficient. Waiting for me to say what I wanted.
“That yours?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Friend of the shop. Their uncle passed away last fall. Farm out in Dutchess. Family didn’t know what to do with it.”
I nodded. Waited. He squinted at me. Said it like a line he’d repeated just enough times to stop questioning.
“Runs well. Treated well by her owner. Been sittin’ too long here though. Lookin’ for someone to take her where she belongs.”
The words settled into me.
I didn’t ask for more details. Didn’t look up sales comps. Didn’t inspect the axle or try to bluff knowledge I didn’t have.
I just said, “Can I drive it?”
Five minutes later, I had the keys. We went around the block. The steering felt loose. The brakes caught early. The heater breathed like a tired dog. But the engine hummed. It felt like it remembered something. Deep. Honest. Familiar in a way I couldn’t name.
And there, behind the wheel, sweat drying cold on my neck, I felt something I hadn’t felt in weeks.
Stillness.
The noise in my head had stopped. My body felt like a bell just after it’s struck. Silent reverberations through the marrow.
Back in the garage, I didn’t hesitate. I bought it. The guy looked surprised I didn’t haggle. Price was so low it felt like a joke, or a test. I passed. Signed some paperwork.
Mine.
I swiped my card to pay in full. Plenty of cash after the Waypoint severance. Getting a loan felt like a needless exercise, and somehow like dirtying something pure.
The truck had no infotainment screen. No GPS. Just an old retrofitted Bluetooth box in the console.
The interior smelled like vinyl and faint tobacco. Inside the glovebox, a well-preserved manual, dog-eared and creased. Sections returned to over and over. Like scripture. I stared at it longer than I should have.
I sat there for a long time before turning the key. Hands resting on the wheel. Steam rising from my skin, disappearing into the cold.
I didn’t think of Jessica. Or Waypoint. Or the apartment back downtown that had already half-forgotten me.
I thought of gravel roads on soft rolling hills. Red clay on riverbanks. A time when I used to believe in wide-open spaces. A tug deep in my chest.
The ignition caught. The engine growled to life. Not loud. But present. Like it had been waiting for the right pair of hands.
I shifted into drive.
No plan. No map. No voice in my head telling me what came next.
Somewhere ahead, west.
Just a direction.
Just forward.
Just enough.