The Long Way on Fridays

I drive for the app on Friday closing shift, mostly people leaving bars, half of them barely aware there's a driver at all. Then there's the guy from the building on Kessler, always the 12:50 pickup, always a flat two dollar tip that rounds to a clean number like he's paying a toll.

He doesn't talk much. Neither do I. The fastest way to his building cuts through the underpass, eight minutes door to door. Sometime around the third Friday I started taking Linden instead. Two minutes longer, one more light, nothing about it makes sense for gas or time or anything a driver should care about at 1am.

Tonight the app pings a suggestion to switch back to the faster road. I sit with my thumb over it a second too long. He glances up from the back seat, first time in weeks he's looked at anything but his phone, and I say something about construction on the other road.

There's no construction. He doesn't push it, just nods and goes back to his phone, and I take Linden anyway, the two extra minutes I've been quietly building a whole shift around, gone the second he's out of the car with his exact tip and a goodnight that's really just to the ride, not to me.