Her parents had told her she was a happy baby. That baby who giggled often and smiled so freely grew up to be a woman who radiated happiness. It was part of why people liked spending time with her, she was just happy.
But that didn’t mean she hadn’t experienced some hard moments. We all do. We all go through our challenges and heartbreaks.
Those experiences help to define us and make us into the people we become.
Coffee. It was supposed to be nothing more than a cup of coffee. It was innocent.
She hadn’t talked to or seen him in years and was curious to find out whether time had been good to him. But that was it. Any feelings she had for him were long since gone so she had no concerns about it.
And even if she had it wasn’t going to be a problem. They were going to meet in a public place. Besides, middle aged men weren’t interested in middle aged women. They wanted young girls who hadn’t given birth and weren’t called mom by tiny people.
At least that was what she had thought.
She had forgotten how easy it was to speak with him. Their conversations had always been effortless and this had been no different.
He listened to her and asked questions. Three hours passed but it felt like fifteen minutes. When he excused himself to go the restroom she caught herself checking him out and let herself remember.
He surprised her by turning around to look at her. They made eye contact and she tried not to blush. Did he know she was watching him. Had he noticed she kept staring at his hands. Did he remember that she had a thing for them?
It was a relief when he asked her if she wanted to take a walk. The sky was blue and the sun felt good on their backs.
A half mile later they wandered through a park and headed towards the lake in the center of it stopping at the edge of the water.
She felt his hands find her hips and her body stiffened. This wasn’t supposed to be happening, but she didn’t pull away.
He pressed up against her and she felt his breath against her neck.
When he heard her say “we can’t” he smiled because he knew that meant “she would” and what was once forbidden would be his again.
*****
This was based upon a prompt from Write On Edge.
Words Left Unwritten 
Hey! Nice post…BUT what is taboo here? Why can’t they? Is sex between middle aged people forbidden? Screw that!
If you left out the intro about her being a happy baby you might have the room to expand on WHY their coupling is not allowed.
I still liked it.
Word count and time tripped me up. Had planned on elaborating and then realized there was an issue.
May go back to it in a bit and adjust it. Thank you for the feedback, wasn’t sure if it flowed well enough to be understood.
I have to admit I’m unsure about the beginning. I think you could have let it begin with “coffee” and gone from there. I like the tension you build, with the little crescendo at the end. It MIGHT have been a little more “forbidden” to write it in the present tense, put us in her head in the moment to feel the details a little bit more.
I think you are correct about the beginning. It doesn’t work as well as it could with such a short word count. I was a little cautious here trying to write this as if I were the woman.
I love it. Are they married? To other people? I was guessing that she was, or feeling like she was otherwise committed and that’s why she shouldn’t. Or I also have the story of she’s divorced and he is not, but she thinks it’ll be fine and he thinks it shouldn’t be. Or whatever else you can dream up. I kind of like that we don’t know – because it leaves us with so much room to create our own, and with a short story like this (within word count limits) those are the ones that always get me. 😉
I know the answers to those questions, but I don’t know if you want me to provide them or not. 😉
I like trying to let the readers imagination run wild. If I can peak your interest and get you thinking good things happen, or so I believe.
Nicely done. I agree with the other concrit, but would also like to add that I thought the POV wobbled slightly there at the end.
This had great flow and wonderful details. I think without the word limit, if you had added a reason why the walk felt good. Was it hard to breathe around him, shut inside the dark coffee shop?
I do like how she thought it was just to meet up, to get caught up, but she didn’t expect to get THAT caught up. Nicely done!
You are right, this could be tighter. That would help fix some of the issues. The characters here are part of a larger story, but that is problematic if you aren’t familiar with it.
What was once forbidden….
That tells so much right there.
I agree you could have started with the coffee. Might have left words to say why it was “once forbidden”.
Agreed. Ran out of words and tripped myself up a bit.
I like that we don’t know exactly what either of their situations is. We, then, can imagine “whatever”ourselves. It’s taboo or forbidden if one, or both, thinks it is and knows it is.
Forbidden is interesting to me because you can go so many different directions with it.
The word count was insane. You did amazing on this. I loved it. Very well done.
Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed it.
The beginning doesn’t quite fit but I like the rest of it very much. I assume that the forbidden part was in the past and this is the excitement of finally being able to act on it. Or maybe one of them is married? There’s a lot of room for interpretation. 450 words is tough.
Yeah, that 450 was tough. I didn’t put much time into this and it shows. I think it is probably worth tweaking a bit, lot of opportunity there.
I agree with you – there is a ton of opportunity here. If you wanted to keep this beginning, I think there would need to be something else in between that and the scene you went on to paint. Otherwise, I would say dive right into the scene and let the characters reveal the past themselves as I think both halves are good, they just need a little more to tie them together.
This story is really tied in pretty closely to this (https://welovejack.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/all-things-are-possible/) one.
I am thinking pretty seriously of tweaking things a bit so it can be integrated into it.
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