The Empty Seat

Elisa scrolled through the feed with one hand and held her wineglass with the other, thumb stopping at nothing in particular. The merlot had gone warm an hour ago, but she kept sipping it anyway, a ritual that marked the end of another day spent pretending she wasn't waiting for something to change.

Same faces. Same angles. Same heavy-handed jokes about being "fluent in sarcasm" and "looking for someone who can handle me at my worst." The group was called Singles of Portland 40+, though it should have been called "Divorced and Desperate in a City That Moved On Without Us."

At forty-two, she had grown tired of the endless cycle of dating apps, the carefully curated profiles that promised connection but delivered only disappointment. Her cat, Norman, blinked from the armrest but didn't move, more interested in the glow from her phone than in her presence. Even he seemed to judge her evening routine.

Three weeks ago, she'd tried to reach out to the group. Posted something honest for once, instead of the usual cheerful facade:

*"Does anyone else feel like they're just going through the motions? Like you're performing 'fine' so well that you've forgotten what actual contentment feels like? Asking for a friend... 😕"*

The responses had been swift and predictable:

*Sandra K: "Girl, you need to get out more! Join a hiking group or something!"*

*Mike T: "Maybe try therapy? Sounds like depression to me."*

*Jennifer R: "At least you had a kid. Some of us are completely alone."*

*Derek S: "You're probably just being too picky. Lower your standards a bit."*

*Carol M: "Everything happens for a reason! Your person is out there!"*

She'd deleted the post after six hours. The last comment had been from someone named Brad: *"Sounds like you need to get laid LOL"* with three crying-laughing emojis.

Norman had watched her cry that night with the same detached interest he showed her wine ritual. She'd learned not to share anything real after that. Hearts on dog photos were safer.

The apartment felt smaller these days. Emma had taken the last of her childhood belongings when she'd moved across town with her husband and kids. The walls that had once displayed finger paintings and school photos now held generic prints from Target—landscapes that could have been anywhere, meant nothing to anyone.

Elisa refilled her glass, though she knew she shouldn't. The wine made her nostalgic, and nostalgia was a dangerous mood for a woman scrolling through dating profiles.

She'd been nineteen when she thought she understood love. Highway 101, summer of '99, with a backpack full of dreams and a copy of Steppenwolf she'd stolen from the library. Hitchhiking had been her rebellion against the suffocating predictability of small-town life, each ride a roll of the dice, each stranger a potential adventure.

The summer sun had been merciless that day when the blue pickup truck pulled over, dust swirling in its wake like a desert mirage. The driver had been everything her teenage heart had dreamed of—dark hair tousled by the wind, eyes the color of storm clouds, and a smile that promised secrets and stories. His name was Jake, and for three weeks that felt like a lifetime, they had traveled the coast together.

He'd taught her to read the ocean's moods, to find constellations in the vast night sky, to make love with an intensity that left her breathless and transformed. They'd slept under stars, woken to sunrises that painted the world in impossible colors, lived as if time itself had stopped to watch their romance unfold.

Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, Jake vanished. No goodbye, no explanation, just an empty space where her heart had learned to beat in rhythm with another's. Three weeks later, Elisa discovered she was carrying his child.

Emma was twenty-four now, married with children of her own, living a life that seemed effortlessly complete while Elisa still felt frozen in that moment of abandonment. Her daughter had inherited Jake's storm-cloud eyes but not his restlessness. Emma was grounded, practical, content in ways that made Elisa feel like she was still standing on that roadside with her thumb extended, waiting for the right car to stop.

The dating apps had been Emma's idea. "You need to put yourself out there again, Mom. You're still young." Young. At forty-two, Elisa felt ancient, like she'd used up her quota of passion in those three perfect weeks so long ago.

She'd tried Bumble, Tinder, Match, eHarmony. The conversations always started the same way: "Hey beautiful" or "Nice smile" or "DTF?" The men who messaged her fell into predictable categories—recently divorced and bitter, never married and weird about it, or married and lying about it. The few dates she'd managed had been exercises in disappointment, sitting across from strangers who talked about their ex-wives or their mother issues or their cryptocurrency investments.

Norman jumped down from his perch and padded toward the kitchen, probably to knock something off the counter. It was his favorite late-night activity, a feline critique of her lifestyle choices.

And then she saw it.

A photo, taken from the driver's seat of a car. The sun had already dropped below the trees, casting golden light across the windshield. The passenger seat was clean, empty, inviting. The caption read: "I'm lonely doing my trips. Come share the road with me."

No hashtags. No emojis. No generic promises about loving long walks on the beach or having a great sense of humor. Just that raw admission of loneliness, the kind of honesty that had gotten her crucified in the comments section.

Her heart paused—just slightly. She clicked to view the profile. Nothing much. A man, maybe 40s or early 50s. Only one photo: the same car, this time from the outside. Burgundy. Dusty. The kind that looked like it had stories in its tires.

The sight of that empty seat triggered something deep in her memory. She could almost smell the ocean salt and pine needles, feel the warm vinyl of Jake's truck seat against her bare legs. The way he'd reached across to touch her hand at red lights, like he couldn't bear even seconds of separation.

She stared at the post for a long time. The wine had made her bold, or maybe just tired of being careful. Every other man in the group was performing confidence, advertising himself like a used car salesman. This one was admitting to loneliness, to the very thing that made her feel broken.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She could write something clever, something that would make her seem interesting and available but not desperate. She could craft the perfect response that would make him want to message her back.

Instead, she typed: "Still looking for a co-pilot?"

The words hung on the screen for a moment before she hit send. No clever quip. No emoji. Just a simple question that matched his simple honesty.

The reply came at 2:38 a.m., long after she'd given up checking and gone to bed: "Corner of Truman & Fifth. 10 a.m. I'll be there."

Norman had knocked over her coffee mug sometime during the night. She found it in pieces on the kitchen floor, dark liquid staining the white tile like a promise or a warning. She cleaned it up with paper towels, her phone buzzing with the message that would change everything.

Outside, Portland was waking up to another gray morning. Inside, Elisa was nineteen again, standing on the side of a highway with her thumb extended toward the unknown, her heart hammering with the possibility that this time, maybe this time, the right car would stop…