The car is thick with silence, the kind that presses against my ears louder than any music ever could. We’d just left the party, and now there’s a thirty–minute drive back to our neighborhood stretching out in front of us like some kind of test neither of us wants to take. Streetlights flicker across the windshield, then over your face, then gone again. I keep my eyes on the road, even though every part of me is aware of you sitting right there beside me.

Lately, it feels like it doesn’t take much. A look. A tone. A single careless word. An argument sparks out of nowhere and suddenly we’re both digging our heels in like it’s a competition no one can win. It’s not because I don’t love you — God, it’s not that. I love you more than anything. More than my pride. More than being right. At least, that’s what I tell myself. But when it comes down to it, neither of us backs down easily. We’re both stubborn, both quick to defend, quick to fire back.

So here we are.

Thirty minutes. Just the hum of the engine, the faint rush of passing cars, and everything unsaid hanging between us. I want to reach over. I want to say something — anything — to break this tension before it hardens into another pointless fight. But I don’t. Instead, I grip the steering wheel a little tighter and wonder how two people who care this much can make it look so much like they don’t.