The lights of the city. Purple and pink. Neon glinting off glitter and glass. Plastic shining like oil in the night. The streets slick with rain and slime. The slow rumble of the car beneath you. The heat of the city only just starting to cool. The small hours of the night, when mischief reigns.

No seatbelts. Top down. A tape deck that needs to be flipped every six tracks. Leather jacket sticky against your skin. Ripped denim and steel-toe boots. Streets you know like the blood in your veins. Bright and flying, buzzing and alight. The road rolling beneath you, flowing around you. A siren in the distance, but not for you. Not yet.

The green lights up ahead slowly change to amber.

She presses her foot down.

The game is on.

Warm air whips in your face, thrashing your hair around like crashing waves. She’s got one hand on the wheel, one playing in the current—flipping and twisting as the streetlights pick up speed. You match her posture, air flowing over your knuckles, making her laugh, making you laugh. You crank the radio. It booms back in thanks, engulfing you both in a wall of noise. Electric and bright. So loud you can feel it in your bones.

The lights are for you now. Flashing bright at your back. Heavy bass drowning out the sirens. Thumping through your chest, in time with your heart.

The car is alive. Power and steel. Mechanical instinct and contained fire, hurtling through traffic, through the veins of the city. Finally alive, finally free, finally able to breathe, to yell, to scream at the top of its lungs that it’s here, that it matters.

You scream along with it. Visceral and free. Her lips are stained pink. She matches the city. She puts her foot down. You can feel it in your blood.

Arms stretched out at your sides. Body vibrating. The sirens behind you can barely keep up. She’s having to slow down to keep them in the race. It’s happening. You’re alive. Right here. Right now.

You stand up, and the wind steals your breath—punches you in the chest and knocks you back, your frame colliding with the force of the chase. She grabs your belt. Holds you up. She’s laughing with you. One hand on the wheel. One holding you steady. This is flying. This is flight. The rush of traffic from the 50th floor, daring you to jump, calling you home.

Whoops and hollers. You yell to be heard. Over the sound of sirens. The blare of horns. The roar of internal combustion being pushed to its limits. The smell of burning rubber makes your mouth water. The smell of oil and fire makes you want to ignite.

The car is a promise. Glistening and spotless. A promise of warped metal. Fractured and torn. Shattered glass glinting like diamonds in skin. Scolding hot metal encasing soft flesh. A chariot. A saviour. Made to be rent in two. A beast tamed but built to destroy.

She swerves to the left. A Camaro blurs past. You slam into the door frame so hard it’s white—pain flooding your system, blooming across your side. Yet another layer to add to the moment, over and under and threaded through it all; the music, the wind, the sirens, the lights, the hurtling car, the burning exhaust, the vibration of metal against road-warm rubber, the promise of fire against unyielding stone.

You grab the windshield, knuckles white, fingers pressed intimately to cold glass. The car presses back, kisses your hand, shaking at the seams but held together by the desire to be all that it was made to be. Kept hobbled and shackled for so long, only now getting a taste of what it feels like to run. It was made for this. It was born for this.

Perhaps, so were you.

She swerves again, lurching to the right. It feels like your insides are dancing.

The leather behind you is sleek and enticing. You wonder what would happen if you stood up. She catches you looking and laughs, exalted. She grips your belt tighter. It feels like a challenge.

You know these roads better than the veins in your body. The strip is coming to an end. A choice to be made.

Right—to the highway. The easy way out. No chance the sirens will catch you there. Open road, you’re gone. A speck on the windshield. Dust and rubber. Disappearing to the night.

Or left—to the city. Red lights and radios. Hairpin turns and one-way streets. Cat and mouse. A maze made for trapping. A dance demanding ever-increasing dexterity. A dance that wants to end in destruction.

The intersection approaches. One hand on the windshield. One hand on the door. There’s a third option you’re only noticing now. A solid expanse of brick and concrete calling out like a beacon. A lighthouse in the dark.

Her smile is electric under the flashing blue lights. She looks like she belongs nowhere but here.

One hand on the wheel. One shifting to the gear stick.

Her smile is electric.

The road calls you home.

She turns left.

---

You know when an idea just hits you in the face, comes out of nowhere and plonks itself in your lap, eclipsing everything on your to-do list that day until you’ve excised it from your brain and worked out what it is.

Yeah, that.

Inspired by the album Memories, by the UK band Coastal, and a cryptic message on a bathroom stall, that said simply, “Jess, I miss you. from your friend Bridget.”