Friday Fictioneers – Commitment

Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!

PHOTO PROMPT (C) ROGER BULTOT

Commitment

I know it’s taken me a long time but today, as I meet Carol for lunch at our favourite Chinese restaurant, I have a diamond ring in my pocket. Perhaps commitment won’t feel so restrictive after all.

Carol kisses me, a perfunctory brush of lips. ‘Can we go for a walk before eating?’ she asks. We stroll by the river, quietly companionable.

Carol breaks the silence. ‘Mark, I want marriage and children. You don’t seem to want either. I’m ending our relationship. I hope we can stay friends?’

‘But I love you!’ I gasp.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve met someone else.’

Inlinkz – Click here to join the fun!

Flash Fiction – Commitment

Commitment

The front door slams, jerking me to full awareness of my whisky hangover.

The place beside me is empty, the bedding cold. Angela’s suitcase and her yellow coat are gone.

How could I have been such a fool?

She had looked so lovely yesterday, blue eyes sparkling.

I lever myself out of bed, groan, pull on yesterday’s clothes. Perhaps I can catch her before she gets the bus to Manchester at 8 o’clock? The red roses I’d bought her reproach me from the floor.

Wincing, I jog; it’s the only way I’ll make it before she leaves. I take the stairs of an underpass two at a time, pounding feet offering a counterpoint to the litany of excuses in my aching head. Do I really fear commitment so much?

I barge through the crowds at the bus station.

07:59 A large man drops a large suitcase right in my path, and I stumble into it. “Oi! Watch where you’re going,” he snarls.

08:00 I look across the crush to the bay where her bus is waiting, and see a flash of yellow. She enters. The bus door closes and the bus starts to move.