Frozen Conversation

It's not as if he wasn't expecting it. He'd seen herself and Gabriel (what kind of silly-ass name was that anyway?)lurking behind the fishplant on more than a few occasions.

She looked flustered when she saw him across the road, waiting for them to emerge. He thought he was discreet, sucking on his cigarette, one eye squinted against the evening sun when the day got late and his feet got tired and he got sick of saying hellos and howareyas to the foot traffic on their way to the shop or the plant. She just about ordered him back to the house. Not inside it. Never inside it. But outside it.

He just wasn't expecting the tone of voice she'd used, the icy feel of it. Calling him a nuisance and a pest. She'd sat right there, next to him, in her lilac sundress in the heat of the summer, tossing him those snowballs of wintry words.

The chairs never forgave her.