There’s something about LA that makes people think every stranger could be someone important. Maybe it’s the sunshine, maybe it’s the traffic, maybe it’s the constant feeling that you’re one lucky moment away from changing your whole life.
I met her—if you can even call it that—at a red light on Melrose.
It was one of those late afternoons when the sun hits the glass buildings just right, turning everything gold and impossible to look at. I was half zoning out, half singing along to some old The 1975 song, when I noticed the car next to me. A beat-up silver Prius, paint scratched, backseat full of art supplies. She was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, hair tied up in this lazy, perfect knot that looked like she didn’t even try. She was laughing—at what, I have no idea—but she turned her head just as I did, and for a second, it felt like time did that thing movies exaggerate. Everything slowed.
She saw me. I smiled—reflex, not confidence. She smiled back, then rolled down her window halfway. “Nice song,” she said, pointing to my stereo. Her voice was light, curious. The light was still red.
“It’s old,” I said, because apparently that was the best my brain could come up with.
“Yeah,” she grinned, “so am I.”
Green light.
And just like that, gone.
Normally, that’s where it ends. You shrug, drive on, maybe think about it later when the same song comes up on shuffle. But that night, I couldn’t stop replaying it. That two-second connection, so normal and fleeting, had burned itself into my brain like a movie scene I couldn’t skip.
For the next few weeks, I started noticing that Prius everywhere. Or at least I thought I did. Silver ones, dented ones, ones with half-faded bumper stickers. LA is full of them—it’s basically their natural habitat. But every time I saw one, I’d speed up just a little, glance over, hoping it was her. It never was.
It’s weird, how much we project onto strangers. I started building a whole backstory for her. Art student, probably. Maybe she lived near Echo Park, spent weekends selling prints at flea markets, listened to Phoebe Bridgers when she couldn’t sleep. I imagined her hands stained with acrylic paint, her apartment full of plants that were only half alive. It was ridiculous, but comforting. Like a story I wanted to believe in.
Weeks passed. I stopped looking, or at least I told myself I had. Then one random Sunday morning, I was waiting in line at a food truck outside a film set in Silver Lake. I’d gone there to see a friend’s short shoot—low budget, chaotic, full of people pretending to know what they were doing. I turned around, and there she was.
Same hair. Same calm, slightly amused smile. She was wearing an oversized denim jacket and holding a coffee she clearly didn’t like, because she kept making a face after every sip.
“You’re the car guy,” she said, tilting her head.
I laughed. “You’re the Prius.”
She laughed too, and it felt easy, like we’d just continued a paused conversation. She told me her name was Morgan. She wasn’t an art student—she was a lighting tech for indie films. “Basically, I make other people look good,” she said. That line stuck with me.
We ended up sitting on the curb eating tacos, talking about the weirdness of LA—how it’s beautiful but exhausting, how everyone’s chasing something invisible, how the city somehow makes you feel both infinite and insignificant. She told me about growing up in Pasadena, about hating auditions, about her old cat named Socks who lived to be twenty-one. I told her about the song from that day at the light, how it randomly came on that morning again. She said, “Maybe that’s a sign,” and I didn’t know what to do with that.
Before she left, she gave me her number. It felt surreal. Like I’d just cracked some cosmic code. But when I texted her later that night, no reply. The next day, nothing. I checked the digits—no typo. I waited. Still nothing.
After a week, I figured maybe she gave me a fake number, or maybe she just changed her mind. It stung a little, but I didn’t blame her. LA’s full of almosts. Almost famous, almost connected, almost something.
A few months went by. Summer turned to fall, and the city started to cool down, though no one ever admits LA has seasons. One night, driving down Sunset, I stopped at another red light. Same intersection. Same time of day. The radio was playing the same song. For a second, I half expected to see that Prius pull up next to me again, her window rolling down, her voice cutting through the noise. But the lane stayed empty.
That’s when I realized it wasn’t really about her. Not anymore. It was about the idea that, in a city of millions, someone could still make you feel seen for half a minute. That a stranger could become a memory, a character, a what-if.
Sometimes I think about posting on Craigslist Missed Connections—yes, it still exists. I can see the title in my head: LA Missed Connections: The Girl in the Silver Prius on Melrose.
I never actually post it, though. Because some things are better left where they happened—in traffic, between a red light and a green one, in that strange, glowing pause where anything felt possible.
Now, every time that song plays, I smile. I picture her, hair tied up, sunlight bouncing off her windshield, and I think maybe that’s enough. Maybe the whole point of LA Missed Connections isn’t to find someone again—it’s to remember that, for a second, you did.
