I met her in the middle of nowhere, quite literally. It was a gas station off I-70, somewhere between Denver and Kansas City, the kind of place that existed only for travelers running away from something or heading toward nothing. I was both.
The sun had just dipped below the horizon, that weird blue hour when the world feels softer, quieter. I was filling up my old Chevy when she pulled up on the other side of the pump. Red Jeep, half covered in dust, license plate from Oregon. The kind of car that had seen stories. She had a map spread across her dashboard, earbuds in, lips moving to whatever she was listening to. She looked like someone on a solo mission, maybe trying to find herself, maybe trying to forget someone else.
Our eyes met for maybe two seconds when I went inside to pay. Just two seconds. But it felt like a scene from a movie you don’t realize you’re in until it’s already over.
Inside, the old man behind the counter was talking about a storm rolling in from the west. She came in right after me, grabbing a bottle of water and a pack of sunflower seeds. She asked if the storm was bad. I turned, and before I knew it, I was answering for the old man. Something dumb like, “Shouldn’t be too bad if you’re heading east.” She smiled—quick, small, polite. I remember thinking she had that tired look of someone who’d been on the road for too long but wasn’t ready to stop.
We talked for maybe a minute. She was heading toward St. Louis, I was going to Kansas City. She mentioned her GPS died, and she was doing it “the old-school way” with maps and road signs. I joked that maybe she was braver than most of us. She laughed. Not loud, just that short laugh that disappears too quickly.
When we stepped outside, the sky was turning violet. Wind picked up dust from the road, swirling around our cars. I could’ve said something then. Anything. “Hey, you want to grab food?” or “We’re both driving east, maybe we’ll run into each other again.” Something stupid, something casual, something human. But I didn’t. I just waved and said, “Safe travels.” She smiled again, that same polite, small smile, and drove off.
I stood there longer than I should’ve, watching her taillights fade into the distance. It felt like the world was giving me a sign and I just ignored it.
That night, the storm hit hard. The kind that makes your headlights useless. I pulled off the highway and waited it out in a diner parking lot, rain hammering the roof. For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I imagined her Jeep somewhere ahead, wipers barely keeping up, maybe singing along to whatever she had on earlier. I thought about what her name might be. What song she was listening to. Whether she ever looked in her rearview mirror and thought about the stranger at the gas station.
Two days later, I stopped in a small town outside St. Louis to grab breakfast. The waitress, this older woman with pink hair, mentioned a red Jeep had been parked outside the diner all morning. My heart kicked up. I looked around the lot, and sure enough—it was the same Jeep. Same plate. Same road dust on the bumper. But she wasn’t inside. The waitress said she’d left early to hike a nearby trail before heading east again.
I don’t know why, but I waited. I sat there for an hour, nursing black coffee that went cold. Every time the bell above the door rang, I looked up. It wasn’t her. Eventually, I paid and drove off. I told myself that if I saw her Jeep again, I’d take the chance. I’d walk up, I’d say something real. But I never did.
Months passed. Life did what it always does—it filled in the spaces with work, noise, and routine. Sometimes I’d think about her when I was driving late at night, radio low, the road stretching endlessly ahead. She became one of those stories you tell yourself in fragments. A what-if you can’t shake.
Then last winter, I stopped at a rest area outside Portland. I was heading there for a new job. It was snowing, quiet except for the hum of vending machines and the crunch of boots on ice. And there it was again—a red Jeep, parked under a streetlight, dusted with snow. My heart froze. I walked past it, trying to peek inside. There was a backpack on the passenger seat, a coffee cup in the holder, but no one inside.
I waited for maybe ten minutes, pretending to check my phone, but no one came back. I almost left a note under the wiper—something stupid like “We met once on I-70. Hope you made it through the storm.” But I didn’t. I just stood there, in the cold, thinking how ridiculous it was that a face I saw for two minutes in the middle of Kansas still haunted me across states and seasons.
Eventually, I drove off again. I don’t know if it was her Jeep or just another one that looked the same. I guess that’s how missed chances work—you never really know if you lost something real or just the idea of it.
Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d just said it that night. If I’d just asked her name. Maybe it would’ve been nothing. Maybe it would’ve been everything. I’ll never know.
Now, whenever I’m driving long stretches of road, I still look for a red Jeep in the distance. I catch myself slowing down when I see one, just in case. Not because I think I’ll find her, but because I still believe some connections don’t vanish—they just stay unfinished, like sentences you were too scared to say out loud.
I guess that’s what she became. My unfinished sentence. My missed chance.
