A Brief Encounter

No one read this when I wrote it, back in November 2006. I need some time to think, and I am looking for inspiration. Scary Mommy hosts Flashback Friday, and looking back through my old work might light that spark that seems to be sputtering right now.

***

They had nothing to say to each other.

The conference was over, and they stood in the cold, snowy afternoon not knowing how to say goodbye. He wore a huge, hand-knitted muffler around his neck, ridiculous in northern Virginia.

“Where in God’s name did he get that scarf?” she wondered to herself, longing to kiss him. He had the roguish good looks of a boy who had spent a year backpacking in Nepal.

His father was a diplomat; he’d grown up abroad. They had that in common. One evening he told her a story about how, as a boy, he scaled the walls of his family’s compound in South Africa to explore the countryside on his own. They both liked big dogs, sharing an irrational hatred of the smaller breeds.

Was it possible to fall in love in a week?

She was smitten.

During the wild farewell bash on the last evening of the seminar, she fished a glass bottle of beer out of the ice-filled bathroom sink of a mid-priced hotel room. She looked up and caught him watching her in the mirror as she laughed at someone else’s joke.

Dawn arrived, as dawn does, on cat’s paws. Sleepy revelers made their way one by one to their rooms. They were the last two to go.

He lived nearby, and she rode the elevator with him to the lobby. The doors opened and they hesitated. She stepped out and turned to face him, waiting for an embrace.

“I forgot my coat!” he exclaimed, the doors sliding shut. She waited for him, but he did not reappear.

In the bright, hard light of a winter afternoon, she watched as he silently got into his car and drove away. They never shared a single caress.

Still, the memory lingers.

******

Inspired by a writing prompt: Write 250 words, beginning with the phrase, “They had nothing to say to each other..”