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Romantic Fiction

A Knock on Love’s Door

First Line Fiction-Prompt# 24

Arpad Nagy
First Line Fiction
Published in
13 min readJan 20, 2025

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From the back, we see a woman in her 30s, with long ginger-blonde hair and her seven-year-old daughter, kneeling on a couch. They are peeking over the back of a couch, looking out a shaded front window at a man, visible only from the shoulders down, sitting in a chair on the front porch.
Image created by author using Bing AI Image Creator.

The stranger at the door knew her name, but she had no idea who he was. A tug on her dress and a small, warm hand on her knee told her Taffy had ignored the instruction to “stay put” while her mother went to investigate the knocker.

“Mama, who’s at our door?”

Darian slipped a hand down, resting it on her daughter’s shoulder, keeping the child tucked safely behind her legs, “I thought I told you to stay put, young lady.”

“Sorry, Mama. I wanted to see who was knocking.”

“Hello? Who is it, please?” she called into the seam of the door frame. She heard hard-soled shoes shuffle on the wooden deck, followed by a breathy rattle of a man clearing his throat.

“I’m, ah — it’s a delivery. I have a delivery for you!”

She didn’t know the voice and hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon in months. Pulling her daughter to her side, Darian gave a whisper command to the child, “Get Mama’s phone from the couch, Taffy. Quickly, please,” she added, then turned the girl around by the shoulder and gave a gentle nudge. If the stranger said he was from UberEATS, Skip or any of the others, she would call the police — she cooked better than most restaurants and didn’t order…

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First Line Fiction
First Line Fiction

Published in First Line Fiction

Each week, I will give you a new sentence — the first sentence for you to write a piece of short fiction. From drabbles to several-minute reads — let your imagination take you where it will!

Arpad Nagy
Arpad Nagy

Written by Arpad Nagy

Shortlisted for 2024 Northwind Writing Award in NF/Fiction. New owner of First Line Fiction. Editor @ The Memoirist, AoE, Book Cafe, Short Place, Kitchen Tales.

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