Three Minute Fiction

This one didn't win anything!

Untitled
by Prairie Mary


Since I was back in town, we would have breakfast together, my ex- and I. Separate tables. It would be accidental. Or not. I’d been gone for five years, so I didn’t know whether he still ate there, but he was a creature of habit. And I a creature of guile.

I didn’t know what I hoped. I’d brought along a newspaper to pretend to be absorbed in it if there were someone with him, maybe someone who had spent the night. Actually, I suppose I was more curious than anything else. We hadn’t kept in touch and I sort of wondered how he’d coped, especially since he’d said he couldn’t go on without me. Obviously he must have, if he showed up. Since then I’d sometimes felt I couldn’t go on without HIM, his support and his warmth. I had to write myself a letter to remind myself how cold and harsh everything had gotten.

But then I’d dream of the studio and how the cat would sleep with us, her purring a kind of soundtrack. I knew it would end, of course. He was my first lover and much older than I, which is what I wanted because one of us had to know how to do things, isn’t that right? So I knew I’d move on and maybe he sort of knew that as well. He was so famous, so sought after by women, that I knew he could replace me easily.

The door was glass so I saw him as soon as he arrived and put his hand up to pull the handle. I recognized his old coat. Our eyes met and held. All the plans fell away. He did not smile. For a long moment he stood there, then turned away and hurried on down the sidewalk.

I could not decide whether to follow. When I opened the door, the burst of air made the pages of my abandoned newspaper turn.

326 words.

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