The Molly Pitcher

Mary pounded the steering wheel in frustration. The Turnpike was a
parking lot, nothing but a sea of brake lights. This kind of traffic
was uncharacteristic for the time of day.

She felt the strongest pull to get out of town this morning, just hop
in the car, crank some tunes and barrel down the highway. Mary was
going to head north into New England where the air would be crisp and
the leaves stunningly beautiful this time of year. But at the last
second, the car seemingly turned itself south, as if it knew where to
lead her.

The car, however, hadn’t moved in almost half an hour. Mary squinted,
trying to read the sign up ahead. The next rest stop was in half a
mile. Quickly calculating the exits in her head, she figured she was almost
at the Molly Pitcher. A smile came to her lips, as it always did when she
remembered…

They lay naked on the bed, still breathless, sweaty, and tangled together.
She propped herself up to get a better look at him, memorizing every
feature, the lazy way his hand trailed down her back, the electric jolt
his touch sent running through her spine. She loved these moments.
Hell, she loved him, even though she could never bring herself to say
the words. Trying to quell the rush of emotion that would only result
in an admission of her true feelings, she made some dumb crack about
whether he thought they would have met if he hadn’t slept with half her
floor in the dorm. She expected the obvious comeback – too many
drunken nights had resulted in Mary going home with a good number of
guys in his dorm.

Instead, his voice turned serious. He told her they absolutely would
have met - that if nothing else, one day they would have bumped into each
other at the Molly Pitcher and sparked up some hot affair. She
laughed, oddly touched. It became their joke.

She heard his voice so clearly now – "we’ll always have the Molly
Pitcher." As if some magnetic force was at play, her car maneuvered
onto the shoulder and bombed up the side of the road. Mary pulled into
a parking spot and scrambled out of the car.

She stepped inside, still unsure why she was there. Mary had the
oddest feeling that she was being watched as she moved across the floor
to the Starbucks counter. She paid for her latte and turned to head
back to her car.

Movement across the room caught her attention. She gasped, hardly
noticing when the coffee cup slipped from her fingers. He was staring
back at her, giving her that cocky grin that made her heart thump
wildly in her chest.

As they made their way toward each other, she smiled at the forces
which brought them together again...at the Molly Pitcher.

Check out the other Theme Thursday traffic stories... (For the record,
I don't know what the heck happened to the formatting of this post. But
I also can't figure out how to fix it...)