I’m Taking a Ride with My Best Friend by Shannon Frost Greenstein

I’m Taking a Ride with My Best Friend

by Shannon Frost Greenstein

Try it.

John stepped on the brake again, the angry red taillights of the Subaru ahead of him illuminating the bald hubris on his face.

Go ahead.

To his right, the gray water of the filthy river was placid; a few lonely boats rested upon the surface, moments frozen in time. John briefly shifted his foot to the gas, then returned it to the brake as the red lights flashed once more.

Seriously. Just try it, buddy.

Derek was scrolling on his phone, oblivious.

The traffic eased, space opening between John’s Volkswagen and the Forrester in front, the whisper of a promise that he and Derek might eventually beat this traffic and make it back home.

The playlist shifted from Sgt. Pepper’s to Bohemian Rhapsody. The low-fuel light glowed. John smirked.

“What is it?”

Derek had looked up from his phone, hypernaturally aware of his partner, perpetually alerted to John’s thoughts by something as inconsequential as an exhale.

“Nothing,” John replied. He was still grinning.

Traffic slowed, and John found himself idling once again behind the Subaru, all forward motion ceased. A flock of geese soared over the river ahead, no shadows falling on the water below, no sunlight to illuminate them from behind.

John glanced to his left, smile creeping upwards until he was nearly baring his teeth, a challenge tattooed upon his face.

Do it. See what happens.

The police cruiser that had been lodged in the Volkswagen’s blind spot was finally pulling abreast of the couple as the cars to the left began to advance. It was looming and ominous and black-and-white, a tale as old as time, flashers mounted on the roof like a trophy.

It was both a car and more than a car, something greater than the sum of its parts, the entire epigenetic history of the clash between civilians and law enforcement summed up in a single inanimate object.

“What do you want for dinner?” inquired Derek, ostensibly arranging a grocery delivery through his phone. “If we ever make it home, that is.”

Still in the right lane, John’s eyes bore through the driver’s side window. The cruiser was so close, he didn’t even have to squint to make out the occupant’s face. The service cap perched low upon the officer’s head exuded an air of obedience, like it wouldn’t dare tilt or fall from its stately position; the badge on the officer’s chest seemed to defy science with a bright sheen, even under the sky laden with clouds.

Derek glanced over at John again – questions about produce and couscous and garlic powder on the tip of his tongue – then paused, his eyes searching, his expression inquisitive.

“What?” he questioned.

John met Derek’s eyes – the eyes into which he had stared for hours when he couldn’t sleep, when his legs were twitching and his stomach was heaving and his body was pouring sweat – and felt a rush of emotion so overwhelming it was painful. He would never be able to repay his debt to Derek, could never match the love and loyalty displayed by his husband during those long nights of withdrawal and those long months of early recovery.

“Just happy to be here with you,” John commented mildly. “You make the traffic bearable.”

But if sobriety had revealed anything to John, it was the realization that love actually makes no sense; that love defies logic in the way flightless birds defy logic; that it is not necessary to justify the existence of love just for love to exist.

The playlist shifted to Depeche Mode. A lone goose let out a series of tinny honks, heading in the direction of its forebearers.

The cop turned his head and regarded John disinterestedly. Seconds later, the traffic sped up, and the Volkswagen was left behind as the cruiser pulled ahead.

Yeah, you go ahead, John thought with satisfaction; with relish. You just keep on going.

After a decade of opiate addiction, the presence of a police officer still sent John’s limbic system into a tangle of fight/flight/freeze/fold/fawn. At the first hint of those flashing lights, that service cap, the pistol and the club and the Taser, a metric ton of adrenaline would enter his bloodstream.

Heart pounding, fingers clutched against the steering wheel, the bags of heroin stashed deep in his pocket, John could never separate the sight of police from the overwhelming guilt and shame that used to fill his waking moments; he constantly expected to be pulled over, to be caught, to be in trouble and to be arbitrated and to be found wanting. The sight of police meant his life was a hairsbreadth from being over.

But now? Since Derek, since sobriety, since therapy and EMDR and all of that work?

Now, he didn’t mind the police at all; in fact, he welcomed them. His empty pockets would sing songs about their lack of heroin, and John would grow nearly giddy with power.

Sure! he wanted to inform every officer across whom he would ever come. Go ahead! Feel free! Pull me over, search my car! You won’t find anything illegal here.

It was freedom, and not just freedom from heroin. It was freedom from judgement, from the pain that he was self-medicating away in the first place, from the omnipresent fear of being an addict and the underlying belief that nothing could ever improve.

The playlist switched to Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi. The traffic crept forward. John watched the police car pull even further away.

“Let’s have risotto,” he said, the same thing as I love you; the same thing as thank you for this life.

John and Derek continued along the interstate, eventually exiting past the traffic, eventually arriving back at the home they shared.

There were no more police cruisers on the way home…but John knew there would always be another. Provided he stayed lucky enough to keep taunting police officers, however – provided he could maintain the superiority of innocence – maybe he actually could pay Derek back, after all.

---

Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides near Philadelphia with her family and cats. She is the author of “Through the Lens of Time” (2026), a fiction collection with Thirty West Publishing, and “These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things” (2022), a book of poetry from Really Serious Lit. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her passions include Friedrich Nietzsche, anti-racism, ballet, the Seven Summits, the Hamilton Soundtrack, motherhood, and acquiring more cats. Find her at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter and Bluesky at @ShannonFrostGre. Insta: @zarathustra_speaks