The Shortcut I Never Take

My maps app has offered the same reroute for six months. Two minutes faster, it says, calm green letters, a little arrow bending off before my usual left. I tap keep current route without reading the rest of the sentence, every single night, the way you'd swat a bug before you'd fully seen it.

The usual route goes past his building. Not through it, not close enough to see a window, just past, on the avenue, at the speed you go when you're pretending you didn't plan the timing. I tell my sister it's because the shortcut cuts through a school zone. I tell myself the same thing, actually, out loud, in the car, like saying it makes it a fact instead of a cover story.

Tonight the notification stays up longer than usual. Two minutes faster. Decline in five, four, three. I read the whole thing for once, the little diagram of the two paths, mine looping wide for no reason a stranger could name.

I still tap decline before the counter hits zero.

I'm not going to sit here and work out what that means about which building I'm actually driving toward. Some nights the long way is just the long way. I only need it to be that for as long as the drive takes.