by Libby Sternberg
In summer’s long farewell, on a warm day that smelled like tea, she made her getaway. October’s beach still scorched from the sun’s baking it all day, but the bubble-thin edge of tide on her toes felt tepid, dampening the chiffon hem of her dress. A deep sigh of relief oozed out of her. Then she turned from the horizon. She wiped her face with a tissue, kept her sunglasses on, strode into the rental office and picked up her key with quick nods of agreement when asked if she had been at the resort before. Yes, she had. She knew the drill.
A few moments later, she unlocked a second-floor condo door, threw her bags on the master bedroom bed, all except one which she stashed on the kitchen counter. After a trip to the bathroom, she rummaged through the kitchen tote, poured herself a whiskey, strode to the deck, slid open the door, and plopped onto a wicker chair staring at the sun-glinted manmade pond.
After she’d guzzled the two fingers she’d poured, she took her glass back into the kitchen to get another. But first, she detoured to the bedroom where she removed at last her backless white wedding dress, a sporty look for a garden ceremony. She pawed through her duffel and found shorts and a tee and squirmed into both in a few seconds’ time.
Then it was to the deck again with her drink, this time drawing her knees up against her chin as she stared at the pond and then at her phone. Why didn’t he call? Surely he’d fly off his damned perch of indecision now. She’d stood outside the window of Gus’s hamburger joint and looked at him as she had a hundred times throughout grade school, high school, and her college years, each look a question: Do you want me?
Someone knocked at her door.
These five-paragraph short stories are part of a series, usually inspired by songs. This one was inspired by Thomas Rhett’s “Marry Me.”
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