Page 14 of The Best Worst Thing

Mirrors

The drive home was silent.

For forty-five minutes, Mari stared ahead while Nicole slumped in the passenger seat and watched the world whirl by. They were in Nicole’s driveway, the car still running—the sun a clock, announcing noon—when she finally spoke.

“Hey, Mari?”

“Yeah?”

Nicole unbuckled her seat belt. “Did you ever feel, when you were still with Lucas, that that’s all you were? That you were just an extension of him?”

Mari shook her head. Nicole reached for the car door, her fingers lingering on the metal long after the lock had unlatched. Her gaze, elsewhere.

“When I look in the mirror,” Nicole said, “he’s all I see.”