Member-only story
First Line Fiction Prompt #1
Talking to an Owl on a Snowy Morning
And re-thinking this whole dating thing
Shivering on the frosty bench, she pulled her thin coat tighter against the icy wind, her bare hands red and raw. Blowing on them helped, for a second. She jammed her hands in her pockets hoping to find at least one mitten hiding from her. No such luck. The pockets — barely big enough for her hands — were too shallow to hide anything more than a crumpled tissue.
So she alternated between rubbing them together, shoving them between her thighs, and shoving them back into the skimpy pockets. To very little avail. They ached with cold, along with her ears and nose.
She looked at her watch. Where was that friggin’ bus? She’d been waiting for almost twenty minutes.
Normally she’d call Seth to come get her, but she wasn’t about to give him a chance to say, “I told you so.” Not after last night. Not after she overheard him bragging to a friend that he could do anything he wanted, order her sound, even slap her around, she was that desperate to be with someone, anyone, it didn’t matter what he did.
She should have confronted him right then and there, or left, but it was snowing like crazy and they had a fire going in the fireplace, and a nice expensive merlot — something she could never afford on her own.
Instead, she waited till morning which meant waking up with a pounding headache and him not believing her when he woke up with, well what most men she’d been with wake up with. As if that were all her fault, and her responsibility to ‘fix.’
“You don’t need him.”
What? Who said that? She was alone at the bus stop. Or so she thought. Alone except for this giant bird fluffing its wings in the tree above her head. “Did you…talk?” she hollered up at it.
A snowy white bird with black markings and a cartoonish face squawked a few times at her.
She stood up to get a better look. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” the bird said, flying down to perch beside her on the bench. “And I’ll say it again. You don’t need him.”
