Sweet Nothings

         The ride home. I guess we both hate it, because he reaches over and cranks up the volume. It’s two in the morning. He’d rather wake the neighbors than talk to me. Typical.
         Look over. He’s completely focused on the road. His knuckles are white; pasty from gripping the steering wheel. I think about what’s going through his mind. Probably wants to get me home as fast as he can. So he doesn’t have to spend another moment with me.
         I stare down, at my hands. They’re just sitting in my lap, cold, doing nothing. But they could be. Something…affectionate. So I reach over, run my hand up his leg, and...
         He keeps driving. Pull my hand away; he doesn’t seem to like it. Twenty miles is a long way to go in a car when nobody’s talking.
         I glance over again. He’s looking at me funny, like he wants me to say something.
         Anything.
         I climb into his lap, wrap my arms around him and kiss the top of his head, his temple, his nose, till I finally reach his lips and—
         He turns his head away and grips the wheel harder than ever. He’s got so much determination, nothing else matters. I think back to earlier. He wanted me in his lap earlier. He pulled me into it and kissed me and we watched the sunset, me in his lap with my bare feet hanging out of the window enjoying the bath of air they were receiving, and him breathing along my neck and closing his eyes and just enjoying me. And we hugged and kissed and watched the sunset, and somewhere between the sunset and it being dark my shirt came off, and then sometime between nine and 10 his shirt and belt went out the window, and by 10:30 we were in the back of the car doing something that had never happened to either of us before…
         …By 12:30 we were pulling into the nearest supermarket to buy emergency contraceptives, and he’s not doing anything but shoving a crisp, 20 dollar bill into my hand to feed to the hungry 24-hour pharmacist behind the counter, the one who held the key to both my and his sanity…and then we were in the car, roaring to his house, sneaking inside so I can take a swig of water to wash the pills down with, just in case…
         …And now we’re back to this moment, in the car with neither of us talking, because there’s nothing to say. Feel a little sore, but I doubt he would care. Don’t really think he would care about anything anymore. Not even me.
          Not even me…a tear pulls a trail down my cheek, and I can’t wipe it away, can’t even move. It’s numb, everywhere. I just keep crying and staring at the road, and then start shaking and before I know it I’m all over myself, hugging my knees and bawling my brains out and he doesn’t do anything at all except crank his damn music up, as if that’s supposed to make me feel better. But that’s not what he wants, he never wanted anything but sex from me and he got it, along with a whole lot of other shitty feelings that I didn’t even know existed, and I just want to scream how much I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I HATE him but nothing will come. I won’t say it because that’ll break this silence; this silence that I hate and love at the same time because with silence comes no talking, no words cutting into my skin deep and drawing dark, cold blood, but I want to tell him, I want to tell him how much I——
         We’re here, he says. He looks at me like he doesn’t want me to leave but he leans over and opens the door.
         Thanks for the ride, I want to say, thanks for nothing at all except for the pills. But I don’t. I get out of the door,open my mouth to say what I really want, Hey, you know what, I really—I really think that I—And he closes the door and drives away—

         …love you.