I sit in the backseat of the car, the leather cool beneath my fingers, the weight of the night pressing against the windows. Outside, the world rushes past in streaks of gold and silver—streetlights blurring into ribbons, their glow bleeding into the darkness like watercolor on wet paper.
The city is alive out there, pulsing with neon and headlights and the distant hum of lives I'll never know.
But inside this car, there is only silence.
I am moving, but I feel still. Suspended somewhere between exhaustion and the hollow ache that has taken permanent residence behind my ribs.
My tie hangs loose, the knot slipping toward my chest. The top button of my shirt is undone, exposing the pale hollow of my throat.
I'm tired.
Not the kind of tired sleep can fix—the kind that settles into your bones, into the marrow, into the spaces between your thoughts.
I glance at my wrist. The watch face glows softly in the dark. Midnight.
