He Loved My Drunk Driver

It was past midnight. I was lying in bed, mindlessly scrolling through my phone, when I accidentally tapped into a late-night advice livestream on TikTok.

The caller—a man with a digitally altered voice—was mid-confession. He was telling the host, and thousands of listeners, that he was having an affair. And not just with anyone. He was sleeping with the drunk driver who had struck and crippled his wife years ago.

At the words car crash and crippled, my left hand instinctively reached across my chest, my fingers brushing against the flat, empty fabric of my right sleeve.