Monday Mission: Needs

(This Monday's Mission is a riff on Scheherezade; write a portion of a story in which a character needs to tell a story in order to escape some consequence. 600 words)

Sarah and Adam faced each other over the table, Sarah holding her coffee with two hands as if she were aiming a cannon, Adam cradling his, head tilted down. Around them happier people laughed and gossiped, leaning back in their chairs or sinking into the sofa. Sarah stared at him, then leaned back away from him and looked away. “I never want to see you again.”

“Sarah…”

“You used me.” She stared at him again, arms crossed hard across her ribs. “You used me, Adam. Did you even like me at all?”

“Sarah, yes…”

“Or was it all about bragging rights for your friends?” She seemed to gather tension by the second, her eyes flattening, her skin becoming paler. “Sarah can’t keep her hands off me! Sarah fucked me five times on Saturday. She likes the strawberry flavoured condoms. What, did you think I wouldn’t hear it?” Adam leaned back and stared at his hands on the table, and Sarah leaned in. “If all I wanted was sex, I could go home with almost any guy here. So why you?”

It was true, he knew. He looked at her and remembered the first moment he dizzily realized that she was really going to let him kiss her, touch her. God he’d been stupid.

At the neighbouring table two middle-aged women leaned in close to hear each other, their faces animated and smiling. The one on the left whose face he could see had a broad, square jaw and two wide, round brown eyes, curly brown hair thickly going to grey. He looked at her as he spoke, so he wouldn’t have to see the accusation in Sarah’s eyes. “It’s like …. I don’t know. Do you remember when you were a kid, writing letters to Santa every year? And every year you asked for everything you could imagine, everything you wanted, and Santa brought you only a few things off the list. No rocket ship, right? No real astronaut’s suit, no robot to do the chores. No million dollars, no mansion. But every year you asked for everything and every year you didn’t get everything you asked for. And then you went back to school and talked to your friends, right? And everyone bragged about what they got. They exaggerated a little bit, right? Your toys were a little bit better and shinier than what you really got.

“But then one year you got everything you asked for. The rocket ship and the mansion and the robot and the million dollars. All waiting under the tree. And … and you … you couldn’t believe it. Every day you couldn’t wait to go back to school and tell all your friends. You got everything. But then you went back to school and no one seemed very impressed. Maybe they didn’t believe you, or maybe they just didn’t care if you got a rocket ship, you couldn’t tell. So you started to tell them that this rocket ship could go a million miles an hour, and the robot not only did all your chores but your homework too, and you just kept making stuff up because you needed your friends to be as excited about it as you were. You wanted them to see it was amazing. You wanted them to be jealous.”

Sarah’s jaw had dropped comically open. “I. Am not. A Christmas present,” she spat. Her chair scraped the floor as she grabbed her purse and stalked out.

Adam finished his coffee, and then finished hers. He’d try again. Out there somewhere was a perfect girl who would love him, he knew it.

(It's not a very good one today, sorry. Frances is opposed to sleeping on vacation. Period.)

Posted by Andrea at March 10, 2008 8:22 AM under Monday Mission

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