“That would be great, thanks so much.” Laura opened the door as Bob leaned over and swept everything from the front seat onto the floor. Then he made a strangled noise as he realized he’d massacred a small tray of seedlings that had been peacefully sitting on the seat, enjoying the breeze in their leaves. He looked up at Laura, who had paused in the act of getting in, and said, “Crap. Hang on two seconds, would you?”

She nodded and leaned over to help him salvage whatever they could. Bob righted the little tray and she replaced the spilled dirt with her cupped hands and he gently found and picked up the seedlings and she made little holes for them and he tucked them in and he could smell her hair and his fingers touched hers over and over in the earth and thirty seconds later it was all done. Laura picked up the tray, jumped in the truck, put her bag of books on the floorboard, did up her seat belt, and put the baby plants on her lap. She turned to Bob and smiled, and in that moment he realized he was deeply, deeply attracted to her.

Laura, of course, had no idea this was going on and merely kept smiling and hoping she wasn’t bleeding on his seat because, well, that would be a challenging early conversation, despite the fact this was the twenty-first century. She looked at the plants in her lap and not out of the window; that way it was easier to pretend she was somewhere else.

It’s entirely possible that Bob’s mind was on Laura’s face, so to speak, but it’s also possible what happened next wasn’t his fault at all. He looked briefly in his mirror and pulled out onto Third, and with a sound like a thousand giant lightbulbs exploding at once, another car sideswiped his truck and ripped off his side mirror.

When the body experiences a sudden shock, it actually freezes for one twenty-fifth of a second and then deploys intense psychological curiosity, mobilizing every neuron and nerve, every sense, every possible input to work out exactly what just happened. In a microsecond or two the brain gathers the intel, sorts it, analyzes it, cross-references it, and is ready to issue directions for what to do next. It’s a miracle, really, and while it might not definitively prove the existence of God, it certainly deserves an enthusiastic round of applause.

Bob’s brain, which was in pretty good shape generally speaking, came almost instantly to the conclusion that everything was fine and the world hadn’t come to a sudden and inexplicable end. The other driver had hit his brakes and pulled over with his hazard lights on, so Bob turned to Laura and leaned over to grab his insurance card from the glove box.