Flash Fiction/ Romance
The Right Size
A grim tale of what it should have been
They met every evening in the nearby park under the cover of an old oak tree. The smell of resin and thin layers of squirrel fur tickled their nostrils as they sat on the bench together. John’s shoulders were usually stooped, and Jane’s were thrown back as if she were bracing against an invisible enemy.
“We can’t be together,” she would say every time. Her shrill seventeen-year-old voice would drill into the warm dusk, and the oak would shudder, dropping a green leaf in Jane’s lap. She would brush it quickly away, repeating, “You have to understand!”
“I can’t understand,” he would answer. With his slim figure bent forward, he was still towering over her. Someone would pass by them at this moment — an old man taking his evening walk, a group of noisy teenagers, a mother and her child going back home after a birthday party — and the curious glances thrown in their direction would serve as a retort to John’s words. How come you can’t understand? Can’t you see? Because we can see!
‘They’ll laugh at us,’ Jane would say. ‘They’ll make fun of us!’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Everyone!’
