I’ve been so busy writing articles for Triond that I have not written a new flash fiction story in months.  I needed to write one.  I didn’t want to lose my skill.  In my mind I reviewed what I knew about flash fiction.  Flash fiction captured a moment in time.  Flash fiction was a significant event with closure.  Flash fiction had a beginning, a middle and a resolution.  Thinking about possible content I went to bed.  That day I had submitted the article, “Triond Gets $1.5 Million Investment”.

The next morning I knew there would be two characters in the story, a young man and a young woman.  Undergraduates.  In order for me to identify with the young man, the story would take place when I was a young man.  And where did I spend a lot of my time as a young man?  In bars.  I spent too much time in bars.  So I had my locale.  Now what sort of situation would be of immediate interest to the reader but did not have to be explained?  Would the two characters know each other?  No, and the fact that they didn’t know each other would add to the interest of the story…Then just like that I had my story.

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Many years ago when I was a young man, before there were cellphones, I walked into my favorite bar near the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.  The lights were low and only a few students were in the bar.  I didn’t know anyone.  I was glad.  I was thinking of dropping a class I was doing poorly in.  This young woman sat at a table.  I thought she was crying.  I put my books, folder and notebook on the bar top, sat on a stool and ordered a mug of beer. 

I drank my beer.  Someone played the jukebox.  It was “Love Me Two Times” by The Doors.  I looked around at the young woman.  She sat with her hands around an empty beer mug.  Texts books, notebooks and a shoulder purse were on her table.  I was sure she was crying.  I got up and walked over to her table.

“Excuse me,” I said.  “Are you all right?”

She didn’t look up.  “Oh, why don’t you just go away.”

I went back and sat at the bar and ordered another beer.  A few moments later she put her things on the bar top and sat beside me.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s okay.”

She sat looking at her things.  “My boyfriend just broke up with me.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Love sucks.”

“Sometimes.”

We talked and had a few beers.  Before she left I asked for her phone number.  She opened a notebook, wrote it down, ripped out the page and gave it to me.