His silence was so intimidating, so cold. He sat, leaning against the driver’s window, as his graffiti-covered forearm extended to the steering wheel, his hand gripping the woodgrain. His brow was set in a grimace, as if he were in deep thought. One side of his face held scars and was hidden out of her sight, but she caught glimpses of it, as they passed by city lights and it reflected against the window pane. The other side of him was flawless; so smooth and dark that it looked like he was made of chocolate. He was a mystery to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He paused to clear his throat. “About your daughter and your brother. You said you lost them,” he reminded. He had to get that off his chest. His condolences came off as casual. He knew she would brush it off. How could he be sorry? He barely knew her. She would never know how sincere he was.

“Why? You didn’t kill them,” she said, her myriad of emotions returning. She was angry and sad and lost and resentful. She was too many things to count and she snapped off the words before she could stop herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” she sighed. “I just wish people would stop telling me they’re sorry. Sorry doesn’t do anything. It won’t bring them back. It’s just something people say when they don’t know what to say. I’d just rather they didn’t say anything at all.”

“Or maybe they really mean it and you’re just in too much pain to receive it. Either way, I don’t say anything just to say it,” Ethic answered; and even though she didn’t know him, she believed him.

Time passed, quickly, as the two let the music do the rest of the talking. When they pulled up to her job, Erykah Badu was crooning about the next lifetime and it felt appropriate, as if this was a man she had run into at the wrong time, under the wrong circumstance. Perhaps, if they had bumped into each other in the supermarket or the mall, hell, even a night club, he might have taken her number. The weighted way under which their paths had aligned didn’t leave any room for anything but sympathy rides to work. She was hesitant to reach for the door handle. He had been nothing but kind to her, a true gentleman. She hadn’t come across many of those, these days. In fact, she couldn’t recall even one. Even her daughter’s father had been one of the bad ones; and although a beautiful creation had come from it, the scars he left behind still affected her to this day. She cringed at the thought of her child’s father and quickly dismissed it, not wanting all the negative things she felt about her past to infect her present.