Night Drives
by Zoe London
Stephens College
Zoe London is a junior at Stephens College and will graduate with her BFA in Creative Writing in December. She has previously been published in They Call Us and Harbinger. Recently, she presented her piece “Unbeingdead'' at the 2023 Sigma Tau Delta Convention and received an Honorable Mention for the Stemmler/Dennis LGBT& Award.
I’m something of an expert on night drives. That comes in handy when Annabelle texts me, just shy of 11 p.m, and asks if I want to talk on the phone.
As a child, my mom took me on frequent car rides when she got off work, complete with ice cream cones, windows down, and singing along to the radio at the top of my lungs. I don’t think I ever shook this habit because now, as an adult, I’d still call the car my safe space. When the COVID-19 quarantine was at its strictest, I found myself with nothing to do but drive around Kansas City. Sunrise drives and breezy afternoons in my mom’s Nissan sufficed, but my favorite time to drive is after the sun goes down. The roads are less crowded, for starters, but what I love most is how I’m swallowed up by the darkness of the open road. I listen to music and do mental somersaults, stumbling three layers deep into an introspective spiral at every red light.
It’s also my preferred time to talk on the phone. The locale of my black Chrysler gives me more privacy than making phone calls at home. It gives me something to do with my hands, too. My eyes stay focused on road signs and yellow dashed lines. My mind can’t wander and is forced to express itself. I take comfort in being hidden from other drivers, from whoever is on the other side of the phone. It makes speaking easier.
Tonight, I hop into my car a few minutes past 11 p.m. and let that familiar hiding place swallow me up. It’s the beginning of November, and the weather grows colder with each passing day. The heater hums into action. I sit in the driver’s seat for a few minutes as the car warms up. It provides me with a reason to stall before I call Annabelle.
Annabelle, who I’ve talked to on the phone nearly everyday since August. Annabelle, who I met online—we both took to writing fanfiction during quarantine and met by commenting on each other’s stories, of all things. Annabelle, who somehow became my best friend, who drove across the country to meet me in person a month ago, who refused to let me buy my own coffee. Annabelle, who sat in my passenger’s seat while we stayed out past midnight, like teenagers on one of those iconic night drives I’d told her stories about. Annabelle—and when I really stop to consider it, the moment before her and with her isn’t a distinct division, but rather a slow build and the realization that I can no longer remember the before, as if my life has always been tied up in hers.
She’s asked if we could talk on the phone the past several nights. I keep falling asleep before we get a chance. And if I’m not asleep, I find a more creative reason to avoid it. Talking to Annabelle has never spiked my cortisol in the past, so I don’t understand why I’m suddenly dodging her calls, why anticipation buzzes down to my fingers and toes.
Maybe it’s my intuition, whispering in my ear that this isn’t the same nightly phone call that’s carved itself into my muscle memory. No, before I press Call Annabelle, I get an inkling that this is the phone call. That somehow, something monumental is going to happen. I don’t understand my intuition, but I think I will by the time I’ve hung up and driven home.
I wonder if Annabelle’s phone will go to voicemail, which will allow me to shelve every incomprehensible twinge in my heart for another night. After only two rings, Annabelle picks up.
“Hello?”
“Oh my god,” I say blankly. “Hi.”
Her laugh sounds like a warm, velvety blanket—if blankets can be said to sound like anything. “You sound so surprised when you’re the one that called me,” she teases. Her phone has a software bug that randomly sends calls to voicemail without ever ringing (I text Annabelle voicemailed when this happens, a sorrowful declaration which always makes her scramble to call me back in an endearing frenzy). I’m twenty one and an iPhone owner, but Annabelle is twenty four and strongly defends her use of an Android, despite glitches like this. She gets cranky when I allude to her being three years older and crankier than me; therefore, I don’t take this opportunity to call her Android and technological struggles a millenni al trait.
All this to say, I am surprised when I’m not voicemailed and get an immediate answer. It might be more than that. A deeper meaning, an explanation for why the sound of her “hello” leaves me in an awestruck daze. Now that I’m on the phone, it’s like I’ve forgotten the reason I called. Or the reasoning behind anything I’ve ever done.
I’ve been sitting in my parked car for too long. With my phone perched on the dashboard, I put Annabelle on speaker and pull out of my driveway. I plug my iPod into the aux cord. This way, music plays in the background while we talk. It helps me escape the dead silence of my car on a Monday night, along with every awkward pause on the phone line.
I’m starting to sweat. I turn the heat down and blast cold air on my face.
Our conversation doesn’t stray from mundane chatter for at least an hour. While it’s not out of the ordinary for our calls to stretch on, tonight it’s as though we talk around what’s on our minds. I have random anecdotes from my shift at Starbucks, and Annabelle recounts her day on her family’s farm in Ohio. I space in and out as I drive, watching shadows from the streetlights play along the blurred pavement.
Conversations like these should have grown boring by now. Little changes from day to day in our pandemic lives—and yet right now, I feel like Annabelle could tell the world’s most boring story (although hers never are), and I’d still hang on every word. Sometimes it seems as though she remembers every event that’s ever occurred in her life, regardless of its significance. My memory isn’t as vivid, so when I really get to talking, it’s usually to go on impassioned rants about books and manga. Annabelle is less forthcoming about her interests, but I’m one of few who has cracked through her shell and gets to hear about them.
I privately wonder if she likes listening to me, too, on the rare occasions that I share buried stories from my childhood and vulnerable, hazy memories.
Annabelle tells me about running cross country in high school, awful coaches, and a heart condition that she plays off as not that serious. I can’t keep track of all the moving pieces, but I’m swept up in her fervor, the rise and fall of her voice, the way that she never spares a detail. It’s no secret that she’s a great writer, but when we talk like this, she becomes a true storyteller. I become her captive audience.
“Wait,” I say. “Sorry, I’m interrupting. But I’m driving on Lee, and it made me think of when you visited. And I miss you.”
“You’re adorable,” Annabelle laughs. Even with my air conditioning on, my face feels too warm. I’m glad she can’t see me through the phone.
“Sorry we went at night, though.” After everything I told Annabelle about Lee Boulevard, with its vibrant lawns and mansion-esque properties, we didn’t end up driving down the street until long past dusk when she visited. It looks the same tonight as it did when I took Annabelle here. Leafy treetops and clean-cut shrubbery look almost black in the night, obscured by my foggy windows. In the dark, October’s vibrant reds and oranges are no different from November’s chilled, muted colors. Tall houses and taller trees loom over me on both sides. It’s almost spooky to drive this road at night, but Annabelle’s warm voice on the phone makes me feel safe. “I hope you still liked it,” I say, “even if you couldn’t see it super well.”
“I did! I could tell it was pretty.”
“Maybe you can come back sometime,” I say, a shakiness creeping into my voice. “And I’ll show you when it’s actually light out.”
“I’d like that,” Annabelle says.
Maybe it’s symptomatic of living several states away from each other, but I’ve learned to hear her smile in the timbre of her voice. And right now, I don’t have to see her to know that she’s grinning from ear to ear as she drives along Ohio country roads.
We talk about nothing until we can’t anymore. Then, we sit in silence. We’re about a thousand miles away from each other, both glued to our respective drivers seats. It’s a pause that’s longer than an awkward lull in conversation, neither person knowing what to say. No, we both know exactly what we’d like to say.
Although we’re both writers, we lack the ability to translate our big feelings into pretty words, string them together in the form of elegant declarations.
The moment strikes me as similar to another favorite memory, similarly mundane and yet crystalized in my mind. Another night drive—that one a month prior, with October’s chill starting to creep into the Kansas air. Wrapped up in our sweaters and eating Hawaiian barbecue, Annabelle and I drove around after dark. I pointed out as many interesting landmarks as I could, both historical and personal to me, as we surveyed the nooks and crannies of Overland Park. It couldn’t have been especially interesting—it was a midwestern city, and not even Chicago—but Annabelle seemed so excited. Like she cared about the dumb things I was showing her. Like she wanted to be there with me. She told me a story about locking herself out of her LA apartment when none of her roommates were home.
“There was a tree next to my bedroom window,” she said, and it was sweet to see her eyes light up and hands move as she talked, rather than hear it over the phone, “so there I am literally shimmying up this tree and flinging my body through the window—which I had left open, thank God—and onto my mattress.” It was definitely a story she’d told me before, but she was so excited that I never stopped her. I’d let her repeat stories that entire weekend as we meandered through drive-thrus, gas stations, and my favorite parks—and I had no idea why I liked being around her so much.
I’d never met Annabelle in person before that night drive. In a more technical way, I had a total stranger in my car, but she didn’t feel like one to me. We drove over train tracks and past fountains, and we sang along to a playlist of ballads and love songs. I felt more comfortable with her in the passenger seat than most of my friends. The first time I saw Annabelle, it was like I had always known her. Like she was supposed to be next to me.
As I drive alone now, in November instead of October, there’s little for my eyes to focus on. I see top signs, dog walkers, other cars, some blasting past me as our paths cross, others driving more leisurely, wandering without a destination as the minutes tick away on my phone screen. I realize that my car’s soundscape isn’t silent, exactly. My iPod is still playing, barely audible beneath all the vaguely unsettling sounds that cars make. I wish I could remember the specific song playing, but it’s safe to assume that it’s something romantic by Sleeping At Last or The Fray, filled with sweeping instrumentation and heartache-inspiring swells of a piano. Even softer than the music itself, I find myself singing along.
“Are you serenading me?” Annabelle teases.
It’s how she normally talks to me, but after dozens of phone calls, I’ve learned the curvature of her voice too well. It’s the facet of her that I know most intimately, so I catch the thread of shakiness in her casual question. I’ve heard the nerves that creep into her voice since we first got on the phone an hour ago—and how has it already been an hour, and we’ve talked about so little?
As I fight the urge to jump from my moving car and run, I’m grateful to be a thousand miles away. It means Annabelle can’t see me blush in my car.
“Oh,” I laugh. “I mean—” I can’t come up with anything clever to say. Maybe that’s why I’ve avoided her calls this week. It’s much easier to flirt around a subject when I can hide behind my keyboard. But tonight, I can’t camouflage myself in the pop-up notification “Zoe is typing.” I’m too tongue-tied to craft the perfect instant message in my real voice.
Annabelle picks up where I verbally short-circuited and left off.
“If you were going to serenade me,” she says, “what song would you choose?”
“That’s easy,” I say—because it always is with Annabelle. “I’d do ‘The Author.’”
I don’t elaborate; the song says more than I ever could. It’s the final track on a playlist Annabelle made: “Anyway. Gay.” Hours of love songs, sent from one platonic friend to another. The first time I heard “The Author” by Luz, at approximately 3 a.m. a few weeks prior, it was impossible not to connect it to Annabelle and myself, the perpetually yearning writers. The lyrics evoke long held feelings and confessions of love; I wondered if Annabelle would ever tell me what she thought of me, too. I wondered if I would have the courage to respond.
I bring up this song now, and it’s like a call and answer. An acknowledgement of this playlist that I’m not supposed to know was made for me, like sending smoke signals between the two of us. Static mingles with my iPod on low volume, which is eight years old at this point, and I’m honestly shocked it still works, especially in this moment that feels charged and terrifying and suspended above mundane details like ancient Apple technology. I hear Annabelle chuckle. I laugh, too. I have to turn my AC off or else I’ll freeze to death, but my cheeks still burn.
“What are you thinking about?” Annabelle asks. It’s not just that I feel comfortable being honest with her. It’s more like she knows me inside and out, and regardless of what I say, she’ll still see straight through to the very core of me. She’ll poke and prod until I open up, so there’s no point in hiding. The truth is, my thoughts won’t shut up. They take me twisting and turning through memories. They unearth repressed feelings.
I think of our text conversation from two days ago.
I don’t know how to explain this but I’m really struggling with, like, invalidating myself and my feelings today, I typed with fidgety fingers and inexplicable anxiety.
I feel like it’s because growing up I didn’t really have online friends, and also grew up in that age of people saying, “Your online interactions aren’t real because you’re not in the same room, so don’t act like they’re real!” So I’m like. I don’t know. I feel like the things I feel are real. But my brain is trying to self-sabotage me and tell me that online things aren’t real. And my brain is frustrating me because I wish I could feel things without it fighting me.
I typed it in a rush of emotion. I had no idea what I meant, yet I knew exactly what I meant. I wanted Annabelle to give me an answer without me asking the question—without me even realizing I had something to ask.
I don’t know if that makes sense, I finished. And then I messaged Annabelle the emoji of a woman running away, because that’s how I felt as soon as I pressed Send. I betrayed the mortifying fact that I have emotions. I was gripped by the urge to delete Annabelle’s number and run for the hills to avoid being perceived by her, just like that tiny, pixelated woman.
And now, since I’m unable to escape my seatbelt or this phone call, I deflect.
“Uh… a lot of things,” I say. “What are you thinking about?”
Annabelle says it all in one breath.
“Well, I really value having you in my life. And I want you in my life—and I think I’m in love with you?” She doesn’t wait after letting the bomb drop, charging on without static or the need for oxygen getting in her way. “And if you don’t feel the same way, that’s totally fine—but I kind of feel like you do, and that’s why I need to say this.”
I can’t speak for a few moments. I just… think about her.
I think of Annabelle’s wavy brown hair that falls past her waist and is dyed pink on the ends. I think of her brown eyes framed by black glasses most days, and sometimes by a red cat-eyed pair that I helped her pick out. I think of her smile, dimples forming next to her mouth—and how I think that I’m going to trip and fall, fading into those little craters in her skin. I didn’t know what she looked like at first. We were friends for weeks before I ever saw a photo of her, and months before I met her in person. I grew to know her through letters, punctuation, and emojis, through phone calls and text messages and words on a screen that, strung together, took on the shape of love. I drive through a yellow light at the intersection of 95th Street and Quivira Road—and it’s no longer just the stoplight next to the mall, or the quickest way to get to the highway. Now, it’s where Annabelle told me she loves me.
It’s where I realize I’m in love with her, too. A few streets after that, speeding through a greenlight on Shawnee Mission Parkway, I realize that I’ve always been in love with her.
I wish my love confession sounded as lovely as hers, like something out of a film or a romance anime. It certainly doesn’t. My declaration comes out disorganized and heartfelt, as though I wasn’t planning on saying any of this out loud but had nonetheless been trying to put it into words for weeks. I try to chart out every little moment where I fell in love with her:
She made me a playlist of love songs and thought she was being subtle. My shift at Starbucks was awful, and so by the time I was off, she had written me a short story to cheer me up. She was the first person I called as I cried for reasons both small and earth shattering. She ordered me fast food from thirteen hours away when I lost my debit card, and that same night, when I couldn’t shut my eyes for fear of what I’d dream about—she stayed on the phone with me until 6 a.m.. She read Howl’s Moving Castle to me over the phone so I could fall asleep, and then a dozen nights after that because I slept easier to the sound of her voice.
I loved her for her stories before I ever knew her. I fell in love with her when I hugged her for the first time, when she came into my life during a global pandemic, and somehow filled a year so dark with inconspicuous flecks of life until everything was lit up, so bright, like illumination was possible again.
I don’t know if that comes out as anything coherent. But I sure do say it all, barely stopping to breathe until I absolutely must.
“Well, good,” Annabelle says. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
It makes me laugh, to hear her sum it up so simply. But she’s always been an expert at that: sifting through the maelstrom of my words, through half-baked novels and long-winded private messages, and giving them meaning.
After that, it’s as though we both can take a deep breath that we’ve both held for hours, for months. Another hour passes on this phone call that I originally thought might take twenty minutes, and I have a feeling I’ve circled the same neighborhoods multiple times. “I know it probably would’ve been too soon,” Annabelle says, “but if I’m being honest, I was kicking myself for like, a week after I visited you.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to invite you to stay at my Airbnb with me! We could’ve done the only one bed thing.”
“Oh my god,” I say. “No, I would’ve died. I would’ve panicked so bad.”
“Oh no, I know,” Annabelle laughs. “That’s why I didn’t ask.”
Annabelle rambles, offering three stories for every two that she begins to tell. Sometimes I get overwhelmed when she talks a mile-a-minute, never coming up for air. I’m introverted by nature, but Annabelle is probably the only person on earth I don’t mind talking my ear off. She’s the best storyteller I know, after all. I listen to her stories as my iPod hums.
“Wait,” I blurt out, anxiety rising as the suburban roads grow increasingly empty. “I know I’m not saying a lot, but I just want to tell you that this is not going badly.”
I’d die to see Annabelle’s smile right now, to wrap my arms around her and kiss her. Even so, I find it’s almost sweeter to experience her grin through the lilt in her voice alone, like a clue only I pick up on, like something precious.
“So… does that—” Annabelle says. “Does that mean you want to be girlfriends?”
“Yes! No, yeah. Definitely yes. Girlfriends.”
We laugh for a long time after that. We feel silly and far too happy to care.
I pull into my driveway around 1 a.m., and if I didn’t have work in the morning, I’d stay on the phone until the sun comes up. When we say “I love you,” it’s different from how we used to end every phone call that way as friends.
“Now you know what I mean when I say it,” Annabelle adds.
It’s not exactly that I can’t remember the rest of our conversation. Rather, it’s a memory kept in my chest instead of my brain, images vivid and blurred, sensations shaped something like a human heart. I don’t need to remember it perfectly when I can still feel it all so clearly, as though I’m still sitting in my car, driving in circles around my street, prolonging our call for just another twenty minutes. Even if the exact words I said are gone, the feeling of telling Annabelle that I love her is engraved in my bones.
After we whisper “goodnight,” and “I love you” a dozen more times, I finally hang up and stumble inside. I lay in my bed and listen to Annabelle’s playlist on repeat. I barely sleep that night, and I’m exhausted at work the next morning, but I’m too flushed with happiness to care. Every few minutes, I remember: Annabelle is my girlfriend. Each repetition in my head is more exhilarating than the next.
I listen to her playlist for weeks after that, singing along to “The Author” in between phone calls and weekend trips. When we move into our first apartment the following summer, we listen to that playlist together. Waking up in our bed that still rests on our floor (even though friends chastise us about “living like men” and beg us to buy a bed frame), lounging on our squeaky blue couch, boiling eggs and instant ramen in our cramped kitchen—that playlist fills our eclectic little home with sound, and it accompanies us on countless night drives.
In the fall, I return to college, Annabelle returns to Ohio, and we fall back into our rhythm of saying “I love you” over the phone. Long distance is difficult—but I listen to the playlist when I have to drive off campus or home for the weekend, and it makes me feel like she’s there with me. I turn up the volume, and it’s like she’s back in my car, driving until our phones die—and she’s in the passenger seat, the furthest thing from a stranger. I call her one night as I’m driving aimlessly around my college town, and the call doesn’t get sent to voicemail.
“Hello?” she says.
“Oh my god,” I say. “Hi, my love.”
In my dark car, streetlights hitting my dashboard, I imagine she’s sitting next to me. It makes it easier to wait for the next time that she actually is.
Interview with the Author
1. What do you want readers to take away from your writing?
With this piece, I wanted readers to really be able to feel the love that I felt for Annabelle. We got engaged recently, so it’s incredibly special to have this piece published now! This night drive took place in November of 2020, so I also hoped to capture what it was like to fall in love and be long distance during a global pandemic. It was a period of my life where I was working in a coffee shop, writing 24/7, taking a lot of night drives, and calling Annabelle every day. I had a lot of time to reflect on what I wanted. That contemplative, aimless time ended up giving me the greatest gift of my life: love.
2. Is there an emotion that you feel when you write your pieces?
I would say I’m more focused on the nuts and bolts of crafting a story when I’m writing it, so I don’t feel super strong emotions until I can go back and read through what I’ve written. There are times, though, when I’m writing a piece like this one where I do feel such a fondness. Writing this piece felt like placing myself back into this moment, reliving it alongside the years of amazing memories I’ve made with my fiancé since then.
3. What is your creative process when you write? Is there a mood you set? A mindset you focus on?
I love to make lists of all my ideas as freely as possible and then organize them into an outline once I have enough to work with. Since this was a creative nonfiction piece, I also spent a lot of time “researching” by looking back at old text conversations and asking Annabelle what she remembered of that night. Music helps me set the mood for what I’m writing, too. In the way that some people conceptualize a story with strong images, I am similarly inspired by music. I listened to a playlist that Annabelle made for me while writing a lot of this piece!
4. What is your creative process when you write? Is there a mood you set? A mindset you focus on?
I wish more people knew how truly complex yet exciting writing can be! It can be a very technical process, and as much as it’s about sparks of inspiration and passion, it’s just as much about agonizing over one sentence for 20 minutes. Getting to experience those two aspects of writing intertwine is so rewarding. When you finish a piece, you really feel like you put your all into it.