How about something a little different? Here is a quick flash fiction I wrote during the Writing Cohort I’m part of.
The Glow from the Screen
She pulls up the app again. The group chat is the same, no new replies. He hasn’t responded.
She reads back through their words. There, she’d said something truly funny and others in the chat had responded with hearts and laughing face emojis. None from him.
She scrolls back further, to the last thing he’d typed. It was an answer to one of the questions she always peppered out, hoping he’d want to share. Any speck of attention from him gave her such a rush of heat and joy. She wanted to feel that way all the time. Looking at it now, she got a shadow of that heat, but it wasn’t the same as a new response.
Back, back further. There, another joke she’d made, and this time he’d responded with a little heart. Seeing his icon next to her words made the effort worthwhile, gave her that glow inside.
*ding*
She scrolls down to the bottom of the page.
A photo! From him! It’s a coffee mug with a funny saying printed on the side. But his hand is in frame, that broad strong hand with clean nails and dark hair at the wrist. She can tell so much about him from his hands.
Quick, be the first to respond! No, don’t be first, that looks too eager. Be cool. Be second.
She types and waits.
A comment rolls in. Now she can press send. What she’s said is funnier, more relevant, than the first comment. He’ll see how sharp she is, how cool and naturally funny.
In seconds, an emoji response appears. It’s a skull. That means someone is dying of laughter, and it must be from him. No one else uses that. She clicks to see, and it’s his icon there, his laughter, his attention.
A frisson of heat starts at the back of her neck, at the top of her spine, and it melts through her, warming her body. She basks in the glow of his attention, the skull emoji proof that she’s affected him. The scrap of attention feeds her.
She knows it’s hopeless—he’s miles away, living a life she can only glimpse through a screen. To him, she’ll never be more than one of many usernames in the chat. Yet she can’t help herself. Every response from him is a spark of pleasure, and she’s addicted.
She types another comment, clever and nuanced, hoping to catch his eye again. Her fingers hover over the phone as a swirl of nervous excitement tightens in her stomach. Will he notice? Will he reply?
Seconds stretch as she watches the chat scroll. Others are in here too, hoping to catch his eye in the same way. Then, it appears—a direct reply from him, a playful retort.
He’s typed her name.
Her breath catches. A surge of electricity crackles through her body and heat blazes on her cheeks.
Can she reach for more? What can she do to make him like her, want to talk to her, feel the same flush when he sees she is there?
There’s nothing. It can’t go anywhere, this digital connection stretched across an impossible distance. She’s chasing fleeting, hopeless sparks.
Futile or not, the warmth she feels is real. She’ll reach over and over for this glow until a nearer light starts shining. She starts to type again.
