This is a piece of short fiction I wrote more years ago than I care to remember. An agent from the William Morris Agency contacted me after the (now defunct) Blue Moon Review published it. He wanted novel-length fiction, and I didn’t have any, so the opportunity was lost. C’est la vie.

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We were pulling into adjacent spaces in the parking lot at Foodmart when he dinged the fender of my old Pontiac. Though we didn’t bother to exchange insurance information, the next morning I woke up with him in my bed.

‘Good morning.’ He sat up and grinned at me, like he knew something I didn’t. His red hair stood up on top of his head like flames off the tip of a match. Freckles spattered his cheeks. I shook off the startled sensation of waking with a new man and barely remembering what he looked like from the night before.

‘Hey,’ I answered. As he glided out from between the sheets with easy confidence, the evening started coming back, the stirring of muscles under the pale skin of his solid thighs, like the flanks of a horse in full gallop. Something sparked inside me and I swallowed fire. I stared as he pulled on paisley boxer shorts. Cotton, thank God.

The next thing I knew the man was in my kitchen. ‘Where do you keep your coffee filters?’ he asked. I watched his shoulders surge as he reached up to explore the top shelf of my cupboard. I always view a half-naked man standing in my kitchen scrounging for coffee filters as a fortunate turn of events. Continue reading →