I stare into the drive-thru order box, the cars behind me now three deep.

Decision fatigue. That’s what my therapist calls it. Decision fatigue must be what renders me silent in the Taco Bell lineup.

I’m sweating.

I try again. I send the words into the holes of the speaker like a prayer. Seven-layer burrito, please.

The silence is too long. I wonder if I’ve spoken gibberish. If I’m hallucinating. If you’d been there, your voice clean and smooth, surely, the order would make sense. You always made sense. Even when nothing else did.

We could have called it a first date. Wanna go for a drive? Two college kids gliding no-destination down the darkened 99W strip. Until the purple and yellow caught my eye. My wish was your command and we joined the line of hungry tail lights inching forward toward sustenance. We ordered seven-layer burritos. Because we had so little in our wallets and it was late and the burritos were practical. Lettuce, tomato, cheese, beans, rice, sour cream, and of course, guacamole.

You drove and I ate.

I demolished that burrito in maybe two minutes, and then I unwrapped yours and held it up to your mouth. Your eyes never left the road but you smiled when you took the first bite, sour cream clinging to your upper lip. Thirty minutes later I’d be hungry again. Wildfire metabolism. This is when you learned I would always need more.

There’s no meat, no lasting substance, in a seven-layer burrito. Even though it sounds like there should be. Even though seven is such a perfect number. I would go on to devour seven years and three states and countless burritos worth of your time because I couldn’t decide. Decisions layered on top of decisions. I made all the decisions it takes to get married, then decided I couldn’t. The right decision by all the wrong avenues. Climbing into someone else’s bed to feel alive again and then highways and U-hauls and rushed lease agreements and unfamiliar cities and all of your dreams around my neck like a collar. I wanted to believe it could be enough. I wanted to believe that the perfect meal leaves you just a little bit hungry. That the warm convenience of you was infinite like the neon promise of 24-hour Tex-Mex. But your patience, rightfully, ran out.

We haven’t had those on our menu for over two years, says the girl into my empty car. 

There’s a hint of bewilderment in her tinny reply. Or maybe it’s judgment. I’ve logged enough hours working drive-thru to know that my time here is expired. If I can’t have this, maybe I can’t have anything at all. Everyone waits on me to move on. My foot hovers between breaks and gas, wheels edging into motion.

Oh, I say. I’m sorry, I say. And I am.