We broke up in a Taco Bell parking lot on a Tuesday and I want to write it all down before it gets sanded into a story I tell at parties. Here is what actually happened. She wanted to talk. I said okay, and I knew, I absolutely knew, because nobody has ever wanted to "talk" about something good. We drove and neither of us said anything for eleven minutes. I counted them on the clock. Then she pulled into the Taco Bell on Route 66 because she said she couldn't do it while driving. The sign was on. The drive-through line was four cars long. A guy in a Blazer was eating in his car with the dome light on, alone, at 9:40 at night, and I looked at him the entire time she was talking and I thought: that's me in a year. She said the thing everybody says, which is that it isn't me. She said she felt like she was becoming a person and she didn't know if she was becoming a person who was with me. And here's the part that ruined me — that's an honest thing to say. That's brave. I couldn't even be mad at the sentence. I wanted the sentence to be cruel so I'd have something to hold. I said okay. I said it three or four times. That was my whole contribution. Two years of my life and my closing argument was "okay." Then we sat there. Because she'd driven, and my car was at her house, and we had to be in the same car for twenty-five more minutes. Nobody tells you about that part. The breakup ends and the car ride keeps going. The radio was on low. A commercial for a furniture sale came on, the kind where a guy yells about no money down, and we both listened to a man yell about a sofa for forty seconds in complete silence. She dropped me off. She said "drive safe" and I said "you too," which made no sense because she was already home. I have been trying to figure out what I'm actually sad about, because it isn't the parking lot, that's just where it happened. I think I'm sad because there is a version of me that only existed around her. He was funnier than me. He had a whole bit about the guy who does the traffic on the radio. That guy is gone now and nobody else ever met him and I can't get him back by myself. Everyone keeps telling me it takes time. Fine. I believe them. I don't want it to take time. I want to skip to the part where I'm the person who tells this story at a party and it's just a funny thing that happened at a Taco Bell. Anyway. I'm working Thursday. If you come to the movies I'll be the one at the door and I'll be fine and I'll ask how you are and I'll mean it. It's a real question. I'm just not going to have a real answer if you ask me back. (the fourth track. the whole time. every time i drive past that exit.)