In the time it took for Troy to realize I was truly pissed and finally leaving him, I’d already rammed my car into the side of his brand-new, jacked-up, man-confirming, white-knuckle Dodge Ram. 

In the second it took to dent the passenger-side door hiding the purple-lace thong I’d found wadded into the seat crack where I thought I’d find my lip gloss, Troy screamed like I was actually cutting off his balls. His hands clawed at his face, which was as red as a boiled lobster, and I never craved tender flesh so bad in my life. 

In the moments it took for me to back up and crash into that truck again, gravel rocketing like bullets off the wheels of my car, Troy had sworn at me using all those names women are called when they have a mind to do what they want. But those names were nothing I hadn’t heard before. None I hadn’t heard him call me before. But I didn’t stop. I kept battering that door, waiting for him to jump off the porch and throw himself between me and his truck, desperate to save what was left of everything I’d ever done for him—loaning him thousands for some crazy get-rich-quick bullshit scheme after I worked overtime cleaning rooms at the roach motel out on the highway, all while saving up so I could go to school to be an x-ray tech; covering for him when the cops wanted his whereabouts the night enough Oxys were stolen from the local pharmacy to drown everyone in that godforsaken town; cutting off Daddy when he asked me to come back home, telling him I needed to make my own choices, even though I knew I was making all the wrong ones, and Daddy knew it too. 

In the minute it took for me to do enough damage to that truck to get Troy’s grease monkey buddies riled up when they saw, I imagined all those dented edges fighting them, white flakes peeling off in ribbons like Troy’s sun-burnt skin when he went blast fishing with those assholes, those self-professed good ol’ boys who drank beer in our living room and ordered me to get them another cold one during commercials starring better looking versions of themselves. They’d have to work real hard to hammer and suck my rage out of the body of that truck. But they’d try. And they’d probably imagine me as they did it, blaming me for their failure, calling me all those names again, names that made me want to trash everything Troy ever owned or cared about. When I drove away, I saw him in my rear-view mirror kneeling beside twisted metal like he was praying at an altar for some kind of miracle, bargaining to take it all back. Like somehow, he’d become a better man.

In the hour it took for me to get my shit together in the Dairy Queen parking lot, I’d jerry-rigged my bumper back on and sat on the trunk of my cherry-red Chevy Cavalier dreaming of going home, of starting over and living up to that potential everyone told me I had, and I realized I’d had in me all along, regardless of what Troy and every other boyfriend tried to convince me of. I guzzled that peanut-butter milkshake like I was dying of thirst. Because I was. For salt, for sugar, for piercing cold. For that brain-freezing focus. For that thick creamy fat on my tongue. It all melted into such warmth, such sweetness, that I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit like me again.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson