The night hums low around them, the kind of quiet that follows a good song after too many laughs. The bar’s neon still stains the windshield — soft pinks, tired blues. She’s half-buzzed, warm from the music and the way his voice sounds when he says her name.

He looks at her when he talks, that half-smile that always makes her forget what she meant to say. The air smells like smoke and cheap cologne. Everything feels too easy — like maybe, finally, she hadn’t made this up in her head.

He teases her again, something about how she can’t handle her drinks. She nudges him, pretending not to notice how their arms brush. “Please,” she says, laughing, “you’ve seen worse.” “True,” he grins. “My fiancée’s the same way.”

Silence. The kind that doesn’t just fill the car — it presses against her chest.

“Your… fiancée?” she asks, trying to sound casual, but the word tastes like metal.

He nods, still smiling, still clueless. “Yeah, she thinks I’m terrible at picking bars. She’d kill me if she knew I was out this late.”

She laughs, too, because what else can she do? The sound is thin, almost foreign. He keeps talking, but it all blurs — words floating somewhere outside the windows, lost in the city noise.

She turns to look out at the empty street, the faint rain tapping against glass. The reflection stares back at her: a girl who mistook banter for something real.

And he… he doesn’t notice the way her hands have gone still in her lap. Because to him, this was nothing more than a ride home.

To her, it was the night she realized she’d been driving full speed toward a dead end.