Stakes - Flash Fiction by Kathryn Trattner

She said hot like pulling up stakes and moving away. The words fell from her lips without connection and through the windows came the sounds of an Indian Summer that wouldn't end.

I sweat, a full time occupation, drinking sweet tea with an inch or so of whiskey because that's what I had left in the cabinet. Tomorrow I'd be out and  have to think of something else. The sound of her words floated 'round my head like candy colored cotton I longed to pull from the air and eat.

Her voice rose and fell, high like birds and a far off whistle you can just catch. She spoke with her hands, and I watched them flutter, hoping they'd land and could be caught. I don't know what I'd do with them, trapped, flapping to be free, but I wanted to press them to me and see if she'd stay.

Stay, because she said hot like it was running in her blood and I could see the Pacific Northwest reflected in her eyes. I felt her absence in the spot beside mine even though she sat not three feet away, her dance of going, going, gone already in motion.