TILL THE WHEELS FALL OFF

I stood in front of his workshop, the faint scent of oil and metal filling the air. Jared had always called it his “sacred space,” a place only he was meant to enter. I hadn’t set foot in here for years—not since we first started dating, and he’d show me the projects he swore were for us. But I knew better now. Nothing in here was really ours.

Jared had a habit of accumulating. Parts. Tools. Dreams, even. He was always building toward something, and that something was always right around the corner—just one more job, one more trip, one more “get” away from completion. He’d buy things in bulk for his latest obsession, whether it was car parts, camping gear, or stacks of plans and blueprints that littered the place like fallen leaves. He’d said it made him feel “prepared.” Prepared for what, I never knew.

When we married, he said all he wanted was for us to have a future filled with freedom, adventure, and independence. What we ended up with was a mountain of debt, a garage packed with broken dreams, and me—standing alone in his kingdom of dust and forgotten promises.

I ran my fingers along a stack of tire rims, still in their plastic wraps, waiting for a car that didn’t even exist yet. There was a time when I’d come out here to talk to him, to try to pull him back to reality, to us. But he was always too focused, too far gone, wrapped up in the promise of what could be instead of what was slipping through his fingers.

My eye caught on a worn leather bag tucked beneath his workbench, the bag he took on his long “business trips” that never brought home a dime. He always told me he was away on job sites, working on securing deals, laying the groundwork for “the big score.” But the bag was always back, a little dirtier, a little more worn, and with nothing to show for it.

Curiosity got the better of me. I crouched down, reaching for the bag, and opened it, feeling a strange sense of dread creeping over me. Inside, beneath layers of receipts and hotel pens, were stacks of pawn slips—items he’d sold, bit by bit, to fund his so-called “freedom.” My watch, his grandfather’s knife, our old engagement ring… gone, traded for promises that had long since evaporated.

I pulled out one last piece of paper, a bank statement from an account I’d never heard of. The balance was enough to buy a new life, the kind he’d always said we’d have together. But this was his alone, untouched, while he left me paying off the loans that had built his workshop, his fortress, his dream.

I sat down on the cold concrete, feeling the weight of every lie, every promise he’d ever made. And just like that, I saw it for what it was. A lifetime of half-baked fantasies, anchored in nothing but my own hope that one day it would all come together.

Jared had always loved things that moved fast, that sped him toward whatever future he thought was waiting. But all that speed, all those wheels and gears—sometimes they led straight to a dead end. And sometimes, all you needed to do was step off, walk away, and let the crash happen without you.