Shoelace

We took the same Uber home from our friend's party. Neither of us said a word for twenty-two minutes.

It wasn't planned. Our mate Sam, who has the emotional intelligence of a wet sock, ordered one car for "everyone going north." Surprise: that included my ex and me.

Her name was Alice. We'd broken up in January. It was now November, the longest and most carefully constructed silence of my life.

She sat in the back left. I sat in the back right. The middle seat between us stayed empty, like a ghost was strapped in. The driver played a radio station that kept trying to cheer us up with songs about summer.

We both stared out the windows. I counted lampposts. Eight hundred and nine. Her knee bounced the way it does when she's nervous. I tried not to notice.

When the car pulled up outside my place, I got out first. Cold air, bad idea. I was halfway to the door when I heard her window slide down.

"Your shoelace is untied," she said.

I looked down. It was.

I crouched, tied it, and stood. When I turned back, her window was up. The car was already moving.

But I stood there longer than I needed to.

Because for three years, she'd always been the one who told me.

And in all that silence, in all those lampposts, that was the only thing she still noticed.

I'd been walking around untied for ten months.