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In other words, friends, Jim isn't mine. *tear, sniff*

It's a small crime, and I got no excuse

Damien Rice, 9 Crimes

At seventeen, crammed together in the back seat of his dad's extended cab truck, it felt right - exciting and... womanly, even - to say I love you.

Now it just seemed tragic.

And naïve.

And stifling.

***

The woman catches her reflection in the microwave and fights to remember when the girl in the truck stopped showing up. When she disappeared.

Maybe, the woman tells herself, it was just growth. Forward and back. Inescapable.

Maybe.

But she's pretty sure that's a cop-out, because she knows...

It happened after the guy - the one with the goofy grin that hits her square in the knees, and the eyes (yeah, the eyes) that make her blush (just a little) every time he looks at her that way - told her he loved her in a parking lot.

And then he kissed her, no, she kissed him, no... they kissed, in a dimly lit office, pressed up against a desk, while the jiggle of a bobble-head doll danced, no... swayed with the weight of their bodies.

"I can't."

The girl was there - scared and unsure - and she lied to the guy in the parking lot.

And the woman in the blue dress was left behind to fix the broken.

***

The boy in the truck doesn't - never did - notice the loss of the girl.

It's not his fault. Not really.

The woman can't blame him for what's about to happen. But someday he might blame her.

He'd be right.

The score of a football game rattles across the TV screen and she hears him groan in frustration.

"Hey, babe." He calls, "Bring me a beer."

Instead, she slides off the ring, feels the weight fall away, and clenches her fist.

There's a world between them, full of dreams never realized.

A world the guy in the parking lot offered her.

And she wants to grab on.

Once.

"Roy," her voice cracks with the weight of what's coming, and he looks over as she continues, one eye still on the game. "We need to talk."