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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I drove down an empty highway on Christmas Eve with both hands on the wheel. Same ritual as every year: radio off, headlights cutting through the desert dark as I headed to my parents’ house in New Mexico. I told myself I liked the quiet, that I’d chosen that life. The truth was complicated.<\/p>\n
Years ago, I’d driven this same road with a woman in the passenger seat. Sarah. I brought her home for Christmas Eve. I thought she was the one. I caught her with my best friend a week before we were supposed to get married. That was when I learned that loneliness was just another safety word.<\/p>\n
Snow drifted lightly across the asphalt, catching in the headlight beams like static.<\/p>\n
I was running late. The sun had already vanished behind the mountains, leaving a bruised purple stain on the horizon that quickly surrendered to the ink-black night. The temperature on the dash read twenty-two degrees.<\/p>\n
The silence in the car usually felt like armor, but tonight, with the snow swirling hypnotically, it felt more like a cage. My grip tightened on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n
Then, I saw it. A flash of red hazard lights about a mile ahead, pulsing rhythmically against the desert brush.<\/p>\n
My instinct\u2014my “safety” instinct\u2014was to keep driving. Don\u2019t stop. It\u2019s dark. It\u2019s dangerous.<\/i> But it was Christmas Eve, and the desert didn’t forgive mistakes. I slowed down, pulling onto the gravel shoulder behind an old, beaten-up sedan with steam rising from its hood.<\/p>\n
I rolled down the passenger window. A figure bundled in a heavy parka hurried over, their breath pluming in the cold air. It was a young woman, probably no older than twenty-two. She looked terrified.<\/p>\n
“My radiator blew,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I have no signal out here.”<\/p>\n
“Where are you headed?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Gallup,” she said. “My fianc\u00e9 is waiting. We\u2019re… we\u2019re eloping tonight. If I don’t make it, he\u2019s going to think I got cold feet again.”<\/p>\n
The irony hit me like a physical blow. A wedding. A runaway bride who didn’t want to run away.<\/p>\n
“Get in,” I said, unlocking the doors. “I\u2019m going right through Gallup.”<\/p>\n
She scrambled in, bringing a gust of freezing air with her. She smelled like peppermint and cheap gas station coffee. “Thank you. Oh my god, thank you. I\u2019m Leo.”<\/p>\n
“Jamina,” I replied, merging back onto the highway.<\/p>\n
For the first ten miles, we didn’t speak. The car was silent, save for the hum of the tires. Leo kept glancing at the radio, then at me.<\/p>\n
“Is it broken?” she asked, pointing to the stereo.<\/p>\n
“No,” I said. “I just prefer the quiet.”<\/p>\n
“Oh.” She fidgeted with her gloves. “It\u2019s just… the quiet makes the thinking too loud, you know? That\u2019s why I almost didn’t go tonight. I started thinking about everything that could go wrong. Everything that has<\/i> gone wrong.”<\/p>\n
I looked at her. “So why did you go?”<\/p>\n
Leo looked out at the swirling snow. “Because being safe isn’t the same thing as being alive. I\u2019d rather get my heart broken a thousand times than sit in a room by myself and wonder ‘what if.’ That\u2019s not safety. That\u2019s just… waiting to die.”<\/p>\n
Her words hung in the air, heavier than the silence had ever been.<\/p>\n
Loneliness was just another safety word.<\/i> I had been safe for five years. Safe from Sarah. Safe from betrayal. Safe from the messiness of letting someone in. But Leo was right. I wasn’t living; I was just driving through the dark, waiting.<\/p>\n
I reached out and turned the volume knob.<\/p>\n
Static hissed for a moment, and then a clear, bright voice cut through, singing Silent Night<\/i>. It wasn’t sad; it was peaceful.<\/p>\n
Leo smiled, her shoulders dropping about two inches. “Much better.”<\/p>\n
We made it to Gallup an hour later. I dropped her off at a 24-hour diner where a young man was pacing outside in the snow, looking frantic. When he saw her get out of my car, he didn’t ask about the car or the delay; he just grabbed her face and kissed her like she was the only air in the universe.<\/p>\n
I watched them for a moment, feeling a pang in my chest. But it wasn’t the old, dull ache of bitterness. It was something sharper. It was a thaw.<\/p>\n
I put the car in drive and got back on the highway for the final stretch to my parents’ house. The snow was stopping, the clouds breaking to reveal a few stubborn stars.<\/p>\n
I kept the radio on. I rolled the window down an inch, letting the cold, crisp air bite at my cheeks. When I finally pulled into my parents’ driveway, seeing the warm yellow glow of the porch light, I realized I wasn’t just safe.<\/p>\n
For the first time in five years, I was actually home.<\/p>\n
I drove down an empty highway on Christmas Eve with both hands on the wheel. Same ritual as every year: radio off, headlights cutting through the desert dark as I … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}