A flash fiction
The porch step is wet from the rain but I don’t mind.
He came this afternoon, when it was still sunny. He’s going away and wanted to see my face one last time.
As teenagers, we had sat on the porch together, my legs crossed over his. He put his arm around my shoulder and I would lean in and peck kisses on his neck. We were in love and wanted the whole town to know it.
‘When will we get married?’ he’d ask, looking down at me, his brown eyes lingering on my lips.
‘When you ask me.’
‘Marry me?’
I would smile and look away from him.
‘When you ask me properly.’
We were sixteen.
Over the years, he asked me another two times before I finally said yes. We had moved away from the town and lived together in an apartment in the city. On my twenty-first birthday he took me to a wine bar. He wore a suit but no tie. We had just finished drinking the first bottle of Bordeaux when he got down on one knee. I cried for the rest of the night. Happy tears.
We never planned the wedding. He had a trip soon after and slept with the receptionist of his hotel. It was just a mistake, he cried. I laughed in his face and walked out, leaving the ring on the table by the door, going back to our simple, little town.
Five years passed before he turned up today. I had seen his car on the occasions he came back to visit his parents and tactically made sure we never ran into each other. He knocked and I was shocked to hear something so familiar. Two gentle taps and then two loud ones, the way he knocked when he used to call for me.
He’s moving to France. His wife is from there and she misses home. As he drove away, he waved.
Our ending is definite now. His car won’t be parked in his parent’s drive anymore. I won’t hear him talk on an aisle in the supermarket. But every so often I’ll sit on the porch of my empty house, glass of red in my hand and drizzly rain in the air, thinking of our life if he hadn’t made that stupid mistake.
The porch step is wet from the rain but I don’t mind.
Originally published in Pandora's Box, University of Chester. Winner of the Professor Derek Alsop Prize for Creative Writing 2024.
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