Pieces

ryanhougardy / February 1, 2021

This post is part of Writer’s Digest February Flash Fiction Challenge. Flash Fiction is a short, often under 1,000 words, style of writing. I hope you enjoy my 28 contributions!

Day 1 Prompt: No Dialogue

He had been tossing and turning for hours, unable to fall asleep. Finally, around 3:30, Andy pulled himself out of bed and wandered down the hall to his living room with his comforter wrapped around his shoulders. He laid down on the couch and flipped on Golden Girls re-runs, trying to distract himself from the nervous anticipation that was flooding his thoughts and ruining his sleep. Ten minutes into the second episode, exhaustion thankfully prevailed, giving Andy another four hours of slumber.

Rejuvenated and sore from the lack of back support his couch offered, Andy glanced at his phone and flipped through his emails and various social media accounts. The reminder he set for himself on Wednesday lit up at the top of the screen and his heart jumped, sending a soothing warmth down his back. He put his phone down on the coffee table, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, smiling with a giddy squeal as he jumped up and ran down the hall to his room.

Andy danced around to the Whitney Houston: Greatest Hits album blaring from his Alexa while he brushed his teeth, washed his face, and threw on some gym clothes. He made his way back to the living room, looking at his phone one more time at the reminder that glowed at the top of the screen. He smiled again, grabbed his keys, then ran out the door to the gym down the street.

The day moved impossibly slow, only exacerbating Andy’s fluttering nerves. It had been almost exactly a year since his relationship with Rob had ended, a devastating event that had completely sidelined him. Rob was his first serious relationship and, after nearly five years together, one that Andy thought would last forever. Coming out to his family was only made easier with the love and support Rob gave him, so losing him felt like he lost a piece of himself. He was so distraught that just a few months after his world came crashing down, Andy decided to move halfway across the country to Atlanta, a place he had never visited and where he didn’t know anyone.

In retrospect, it wasn’t a brilliant idea, moving thousands of miles from his home in Seattle without a job or an apartment waiting for him. But Andy was resilient. He picked up the pieces of his shattered life and began to put them back together with a new career, a new condo, new friends, and, maybe, a new relationship. To Andy, there was something unbelievably thrilling and satisfying about starting over, despite how scary and impossible it initially seemed. Now, as he sat in his living room, an hour before Josh was supposed to pick him up, he sipped a glass of red wine, desperately trying to calm his stomach that hadn’t stopped doing somersaults all afternoon.

His phone lit up with a text from Josh giving him a ten-minute ETA. Andy’s heart hammered within his chest and he knew he couldn’t keep still on the couch any longer. He got up and began pacing around the apartment, developing a short-lived routine that consisted of taking a sip of wine in between takes in front of the mirror. His phone buzzed on the counter and he froze in place. Josh was outside. Andy took a deep breath, looked in the mirror one last time with a coy yet confidant smile, then made his way outside to what he hoped was the final piece of his nearly rebuilt life.