Mary watched enviously as the characters in the rom-com finally fell into bed together. She hadn’t had sex for three months. Normally, she’d just find a guy on a hookup app, meet him for coffee to be sure he wasn’t a creep, and bring him home. But ever since her pregnancy started showing, guys had developed an alarming reluctance to touch her. They would say hi, notice her belly, get nervous, and make an excuse to leave....

“So?” Camille’s expectant eyebrow rises. I shake my head. Such is our friendship; she knows me well enough by now. “Oh.” She lifts her coffee to her lips, giving me a pause for thought. This is not something to dwell on; no post-mortem is required regardless of her ingenue eyes. Around us, the bright conversations and the incidental sounds of the café continue. Sunlight streams through the windows, and this good weather i...

Josh McKenzie, our neighbour’s son, stood on the porch of our house. I was at work but the camera I recently installed detected him and sent an alert to my phone. We’d had some trouble with porch pirates, so I installed the cam to watch for deliveries that came for my wife’s home-based business. However, it picked up just about any activity on the porch or front walk, even the odd animal or bird. And, of course, anyone co...

Staying overnight to break his journey allowed Henry to continue doing some of the things he enjoyed. His mind and body may not have been what they once were, but his stubbornness had remained undiminished. Tapping the entry code into the room he had rented online, Henry felt immeasurable relief at escaping the cold. However, the sound of footsteps coming towards him and the appearance of two young women from inside the r...

The last lights of a multi-hued Southern California sunset were being dragged into the ocean, but the moonlight had already been visible for several hours. The hungry waves lapped at the beach as we walked through Paradise Cove in Malibu. The hike along the coast became tricky at some points, with crossing rocks to access the more isolated parts of the coast beaches. The crowds that flocked to the coast in early summer ha...

Scott had been communicating with Maria for one week on the online dating app when they finally spoke on the phone. Her voice was soft, her laugh infectious, and her tone a bit flirty. Being in their mid-forties, they knew the difficulties of dating at their age, especially online dating. On the second phone call, he asked Maria if she’d like to accompany him to the “You Pick” flower farm for a first date. “What a unique...

I ate most of my meals at a restaurant/bar near my apartment. It was a pleasant place with a corner bar that wrapped around the kitchen. One wing faced the lounge where some nights music was played by a DJ; the other wing faced the eating area where waitresses filled diners’ drink orders. I liked to eat at one of the corner stools so I could people-watch either room, one of my regular pastimes. Monday after Cassie’s retur...

Fidgeting with her keys, Kara hesitated at the front door of her girlfriend’s apartment. No, scratch that. Victoria always frowned when Kara said, “girlfriend.” She said the word was “used by the patriarchy to demean relationships between women.” But she also resisted any attempt to find a better term to define their relationship, so Kara found herself falling back on the word that most people understood. They’d met at a...

I have been teaching high school in California for thirty-five years. I am happy to say that this is my last. I’ll turn sixty in March and max out my retirement benefit based on the “Age & Years” schedule. After thirty-five years, my pension will be well over $100,000 per year. It was the first week of August, and teachers returned to campus on Monday. After everyone checked in and settled into their classrooms, we had th...