Flash Fiction 1st Place: That Time in the 90s When I Tried to Forget I Was Flammable by Nikki Davison
Slipping out of sandals, I prop my feet on the dash — like I’m some cool, free-spirited girl from a road movie. He approves. Behind Ray-Bans, his eyes flit between the road ahead and my display of tanned legs.
We park by the pier. The tide is coming in so we shelve plans to walk along the sand, perching instead among stone lions in the centre of an empty fountain on the promenade. Sharing his last cigarette, we stare at the sea and talk shit about where we plan to travel. Him: road trip across America. Me: Paris, specifically Père Lachaise Cemetery, to lay a rose on Jim Morrison’s grave. My cheeks flame, aware my plan sounds too low-key, too cringe, too me. Perhaps he’d prefer to hear something else, like backpacking across Asia; free spirits would drift beyond their limits, choose distant unpredictable continents to roam. His kiss fills the blank space of my silence, and I forget about fabricating travel plans, as we taste where this night could lead. Figuring that cool girls don’t play hard to get, that the preamble is likely over, I suggest we go to his place.
On the way, we stop at the convenience store on the corner of Follingsby Avenue. Buy Marlboro Lights, condoms, and vodka, giggling and mimicking the raised eyebrow of the old lady cashier as we get back into his silver VW. He turns the key and the universe doesn’t just send a sign, but our own personal soundtrack, as ‘Stay Together,’ Suede’s latest song, blares though tinny speakers of the car-radio.
Suede played the City Hall last Saturday. We’d both been there, grabbing for the same rip-off tour t-shirt from a tout outside of the fire doors. High from live music and plastic cups of beer, I morphed into a girl who thought herself able to acquire both the shirt and the beautiful stranger trying to take it from her.
‘We could swap numbers…to share custody of the t-shirt?’ my confidence proposed. ‘How do the first and third weekends of the month work for you?’
He smiled and played along. ‘Throw in Wednesdays and you might have a deal.’
So, I took out an eyeliner and scribed my number in black kohl along the inside of his right arm, walked away with the t-shirt, looking back only as I turned the corner to make sure he was watching — that he was as taken with this girl as I was.
He taps his hand on the wheel in time with the radio and I stay tuned to my carefree bravado by unscrewing the cap of the vodka. I take a swig, then another, gulping down the caustic reality of inexperience. Praying vodka can steady the tremble of my feet on the dash and for a miracle to prevent fake-tan smudging onto his bed sheets and revealing that, unlike those golden road movie girls, I’m lacking — I burn in the sun.
