Faded

Photo Credit Jeff Stroud

I'm taking an online writing class this summer with teachers Robin Rice and Emily McDowell at https://www.bewhoyouare.com/ The writing prompts are pictures and we are free to write whatever we'd like to as inspired by the photo. 

Here's what I wrote to go with the photo above:

I knew he was a bad idea from the beginning. Like being dealt a 2-7 offset hand and moving all your chips to the center, bad idea. But I had always run to a difficult situation, especially if the situation had blue eyes.

The first time I saw him, he was standing at a pool table holding a beer and another woman. If they still allowed smoking in bars in Hollywood, he would have been holding a cigarette. In my stilettos, I was three inches taller than he was. The man I was with, I’d already left in my mind, even though it took me a few months to let him in on it. No matter. These other people weren’t obstacles. I always knew how to get what I wanted without trying too hard.

By July, we were a fast motion movie scene of fights and sex, break-up and make-up with trips to Vegas and the track and more than one night in a strip club. We had late night phone calls that left me with mascara tears streaming down my face. We made out in the alley behind my apartment. You know, the usual drama. But tonight, on my seventy-fourth birthday, the last thing I expected was to fall in love with him.