Evening Distractions

By Giana Adote

For a flash fiction exercise, we started with a prompt and edited down to 100 words. I cut out words that didn’t hold as much significance to the story, and what’s left was intentionally included to help show the reader instead of telling them.

Sitting at my favorite coffee shop, my fingertips brush the delicate pages of my book as I sip on the velvety hot chocolate. In the middle of a plot twist, a woman wearing a winter jacket with black, knee high leather boots and a gray knit beanie walks in looking straight out of a magazine. Her perfectly filled in red lips order. She stands there fiercely texting, lips pursed and eyebrows scrunched. Drink in hand, she struts out of the shop. Minutes later, my mind is still on her; where’d she come from? Why did she look so upset?