One of the best days of my life was the day you called me to come pick you up because you totaled your Camero.

You took me to the lot with you, and I told you it was stupid to buy it, that you should buy something sensible. You rarely ever took my advice. I remember looking at that car and thinking, I’m going to die in that thing. You always drove, and you always drove fast and sometimes drunk.

We took every curve too fast.

I watched you take out the T-tops, lay them in their special cases as if laying a newborn babe in a bassinet. You loved her so. You never touched me with such tenderness and care. Perhaps if I had been more expensive…

The heat was on full-blast, my hair whipped into the night air. I think I had fun the first time, until I realized that if we wrecked, I would lose my head.

It had to be CLEAN, and god forbid I tracked in dirt or got cigarette ash on the door panel.

You loved that car, and you drove it the night you left your dog in the woods. I cried, begged you to go get him. He was still sitting in the same place, his blanket made into a nest, his food covered with twigs and leaves. He knew you weren’t coming back, and when he saw you, he peed himself. I held him, shaking in my lap, on the trip back home. You gave him away a month later.

Two months later, your next dog vomited all over the back seat.

The month after that, you wrecked.