Temporary Togetherness

Temporary Togetherness (March 2019, Week 1, Day 5)

The buzzing of her phone woke her up with a start. Staring at the ceiling waiting for her heart to calm down, Maggie worked through the cotton candy in her brain to remember where she was and why she’d set the alarm. This wasn’t her room – she could tell by the smell and the feel of the smooth pillowcase beneath her head. Silk wasn’t her style. She’d tried it once in the eighties thanks to watching too much daytime television. The odd slippery feeling wasn’t something she’d liked back then and she didn’t love the feeling right now. Sorting through this fabric problem did have the side benefit of slowing her pulse and letting her brain get a bit more organized, so she offered up a silent thank you to the larve who had contributed to her morning. Her thoughts were interrupted by a grunt and shift of the woman in bed next to her. Everything came rushing back quickly and her pulse quickened a bit with the memories. 

She groped under the pillow to find her phone before easing herself out from under the heavy comforter – another tell that this was not her space – without waking her bed mate. The sun was only just rising so she hoped to be able to make a clean break. It took her a few minutes to find all of her clothing, and she didn’t resist the smile that came at the scattered evidence of the exuberance of the night before. It was fun and, as long as she got out of there now, could stay an awesome memory.

Maggie pulled the bedroom door closed behind her with one final look at the woman who lay there. She thought about looking for some sign of the woman’s name in her apartment before taking off and decided against it. Not having a name to put to the memory would make it that much sweeter. With her clothes in her arms she padded down the hallway and into the kitchen to get dressed. The room was cold, large, and blissfully empty. As she pulled on her clothes from the night before, Maggie looked around the kitchen, taking in the details that gave her a different picture of the woman. No-Name clearly spent time cooking. Maggie hadn’t been in a kitchen with so many gadgets since she was a little kid. And everything matched – the tea kettle, the mixer, the blender, even the waffle iron were all in the same old-timey pink. The shelf of recipe books made Maggie want to pull up a chair and flip through them. She wondered which ones would have stains or dog eared pages or notes written in the margins. These and the refridgerator full of irreverant magnets, some of which were holding out of date coupons and notices to music events, almost made Maggie turn around and head back into the bedroom.

As she pulled the back door closed behind her, the clock on the microwave told her she’d set a new record – in and out in under 6 hours. 

3 thoughts on “Temporary Togetherness”

  1. This is my runner up. I feel like this is the start of a mystery, which is intriguing … but your narrator in The Diner has such a fun, authentic voice. I definitely want to hear more of it.

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