Writing, mostly.

First published on cowbird, Feb 2nd 2012

“You should ask her out, you should.”

I wasn’t so sure. What if she said no?

It was a possibility which only ever seemed to occur to me and the reason why this was the first time I’d ever even got this far in asking anybody out.

“You don’t have to ask her face to face.”

This was good. A phone call, then. I could do it with a phone call. Only… what if she said no?

OK, how’s this: a phone call, not made by me but by a friend? That gave me deniability.

Even better, a phone call made by a friend from another friend’s house.

Without me in the room.

It’s a wonder it didn’t work.

Rejected, we all made our way home. A car passed us as we walked. It was going far too fast. It hit something. It flipped. Its back end reached for the sky before hitting the tarmac and spinning to a stop, some two hundred yards ahead of us.

We didn’t know what to do so we carried on home and trusted other people to reach the crash scene in our place.

Occasionally, I wonder what happened to the girl I didn’t phone, and whether there were any survivors.