He had been a crazy love, a neurotic, rocked me to my bones, pushed every sexual button I owned love. We were like oil and water, he the quiet, dark and dangerous, me the ornery, transparent and flirtatious. When we weren’t igniting each other’s skin with passion, we were igniting each other’s anger.
We dated for several months before moving in together.
I did what I always did when I moved: invited my mom and friends to clean top to bottom, paint, repair a ceiling fan, make the place my own.
He didn’t like it.
Two weeks later, two weeks of my domestic bliss and the end of his bachelorhood he kicked me out.
I left in my car, tears blurring my vision, fingers fumbling to remove the painful connection to him from my key ring. So wound up in my own pain, I took my eyes off the road and looked down at the jumble of keys in my lap. A moment later, CRASH.
I had ran into the rear end of a parked car. Crunched were the two bumpers, my car, totalled. But most memorable was the vision of the inside of my victim’s trunk: a baby stroller, crumpled.
Just like me.
this is good, momma. that stroller? yeah. good.
Oh that final image – the stroller in the parked car chilled me for a second (before I realized the baby was probably elsewhere if the car was parked), then that ‘like me’ absolutely resonated. Well done! (I found you from the RemembeRed linkup.)
…painful connection to him from my key ring….
That line. That one was the “visual” for me. Seeing a key as an emotional tether. Taking it off and severing…yeah, THAT line.
Well done!
oh, the stroller and the keys, especially on the heels of the giddy, hot romance.
I’ve missed you round the WoE parts.
Fabulous…the writing, not what happened!
The ending was chilling. Especially the image of the broken relationship against the stroller. Very nice.
That ending was chilling. Well done!
The ending – wow . . . way to give us the heebie-geebies.
I remember, talking to the man who rear-ended my wife . . . she was waiting at a stop and he just up & hit her, smashing the rear-windshield.
He flipped out when he saw not one, but two, carseats (they were, fortunately, with me when this all happened). Seriously, nobody was hurt, and we were able to get a new car . . . all-in-all, it wasn’t a “bad crash,” but he was shaken, days later.
So sad… but so well written. The part that got me the most was seeing the stroller. I can’t imagine the feeling but with it being a parked car I think that relief that the car was empty would be the first thing that I felt.
Your title?
Perfect.
I love how you worked it into the last line, too.
Such an concrete analogy.
Crumpled. Yes.
And we have all been there, no?
beautiful and powerful.
Oh! I didn’t see that coming….wow.