We were somewhere in city limits. It was so exhilarating to drive next to you, to feel that I had youth and beauty and an offset destination, and you were there. As we clipped through the streets, I shifted my neck to catch the piers of windows that flushed the skies. You didn’t slow. We ate steaks and lulled through grocery stores and the floors upon floors of shopping malls, parking ramps. There were lottery tickets, car washes, photographs from a hotel window where we ordered pizza and devoured it while sitting on the floor, before a night folded.

We’d listen to cool music, spray each other with sarcasm and laughter. You made good points and I cleared my mind for them. The shutter was always in motion. I took it for granted.