Whispered Beginnings

Driven

  Wayne Harris-Wyrick

  He looked away from the traffic at the woman next to him and smiled. Just the sight of her thrilled his heart with more cheer than all the spring flowers blooming along the roadway. He couldn’t imagine the journey of his life with her not in it.

  They met by accident, when she almost ran into him as she was coming out of the grocery store parking lot. He had tried to be comforting, seeing the distress in her face. She got over it pretty quickly, or so it seemed to him. Maybe that was still bothering her. Just a little.

  But now they had grown apart. Sometimes, she acted as if she didn’t know him at all, refusing even direct eye contact anymore. He had tried his best to go along with whatever direction her life took, but they seemed to be straying farther and farther from their original path.

  What could have caused the relationship to turn sour so quickly? “I can’t image it was something I said,” he whispered, more to himself then out loud. We speak so rarely, he thought. And perhaps that was it. Women need those little affirmations of their man’s feelings. Maybe he had been too stoic at times.

  Lost in these thoughts of how their relationship took such a wrong turn, he didn’t immediately notice that the light had changed to green. By the time he realized it, from the car behind him honking at him, there were already several cars between him and her.

  "These drive-home relationships always end so abruptly," he sighed. Perhaps he’d find a new girlfriend on his drive home tomorrow.