Zuri's Stolen Heart

At the bar, I sat alone at the back, watching the crowd move. Even in a small city like this, you could always find a place where you didn't have to talk to people. That's why I liked it here.

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket on auto pilot without looking.

"Hey baby! What are you doing? Where are you?" The text read. It was my girlfriend. We'd been together for about three months now and she thought we should hang out tonight but I told her I had plans with the guys and that I'd see her tomorrow. The truth is that I just wasn't in the mood to go home yet and talk to her about what she's been up to or whatever else she has to bitch about this week. In fact, I was usually never in the mood to do that.

I took a sip of my beer and settled back into my chair when another message came through. "Are you cheating on me? I saw your car outside of some lady's house." My chest tightened and suddenly it felt like someone had punched me in the face. But how did she know where I was? And who's house was she talking about?

I stood up so fast my chair fell backwards making a loud clang as it hit the ground. People turned around to look at me but I ignored them as I rushed out of the bar. Outside, I started running down the street towards my car, feeling panic start to set in because now I realized that she must have seen me drive away from her house earlier today but why would she be there? Unless... no, no way! Why would she be at my house?

I reached my car and dumped my keys twice before getting them into the ignition, slammed the door shut and tore out of the parking lot with tires screeching. As soon as I was on the road, I switched on my lights and pushed down on the gas pedal until it hit the floor mat. At one point, I had to swerve around another car that stepped right into my lane but otherwise nobody got in my way as I flew down main street, following all traffic lights even though they were all red, which earned me quite a few angry honks as well as some middle fingers as people passed me while they waited to turn left or whatever traffic rule they were trying to follow. A couple times, someone went ahead and made their turn anyway just to get away from me but for most people who didn't want to run over someone who ran a red light, they waited patiently for their turn which let me speed past them without slowing down. After all those years of experience driving drunk with friends after our high school parties, it hadn't taken long for me to learn how not to crash into anything when you were going slightly faster than everyone else on the road at night time.

It took me only 20 minutes before reaching home but when I pulled into my driveway and parked by my front door, everything went quiet around me because all that noise had drowned out everything else while driving here so hearing silence now felt sudden and eerie as if someone had cut out all background noise during a movie ending scene and put stinger music over it instead so you expect something bad is about happen next but then nothing does so there's this tense moment of waiting for something to happen before finally taking your seat again when nothing does and then realizing you still don't really know what happened during that scene because you missed most of it because you were too busy listening for something bad when nothing happened so now you're left wondering if something bad actually did happen after all or if it was just your imagination filling in blanks left by an odd transition from loud road noise ot silence..

...or something like that anyway... Anyway...

Forcing myself out of the vehicle, I walked quickly up to the house which looked dark inside so at least there didn't seem to be anyone in there which probably meant that it was empty and seeing as how *that* answer felt much more preferable than any other answer there could be right now...