I heard a chair scrape behind me, then nothing but the pounding of my own footsteps as I left the office I had poured myself into and walked straight into the bright morning sun like a man getting shoved out of his own life.
The second I got inside my car, I locked the doors.
Then I gripped the steering wheel and screamed.
Not words—just raw, broken sound.
And I had no idea that the woman I’d stopped for was about to come looking for me.
The steering wheel of my seven-year-old Honda Accord bore the rhythmic indentations of my knuckles.
The vinyl was cold, cracked along the top seam where the high-altitude sun of suburban Denver had baked it for half a decade.
When the scream finally tore itself out of my chest, it didn’t feel like sound; it felt like jagged, unrefined gravel being dragged up through my esophagus.
