Fat Chance
An excerpt from the second short story in the collection, You Never Know and other stories
Listen to an audio recording:
Fat Chance tells the story of an enchanting encounter with a young man in a bar that takes Trish on a serendipitous search on social media.
Excerpt:
“I need a change,” Trish told her hairdresser.
Andrea’s nimble fingers plucked Trish’s damp, naturally curly chestnut curls as she explained what she had in mind: short at the back and tapered just below the ears and along the jaw with the bulk thinned out and layered at the top. “So what brings this on?”
“I-uh, I kinda met someone. About a month ago.”
“Awesome!” Andrea’s gold-lidded blue eyes lit up her Renaissance face. “Now spill the beans!”
“Well, he’s very charming and good-looking. And younger!”
“That’s cool!” Andrea lopped off a good two inches and flung the amputated curls to the floor.
“Quite a bit younger!”
“Hey, no problema!”
“Twenty years younger?”
“Like, what is he?” Andrea waved her scissors in the air like a sitcom comedienne. “Sixteen?”
Trish ran, did yoga, and shunned red meat, and though Andrea could take ten years off with a pair of scissors, she seriously doubted she could pass for thirty-seven. “Twenty-six, twenty-eight, I’d say. Thirty at the most.”
“Wait a minute! You’re not—”
“Forty-seven.”
“No way!” Andrea continued snipping. “So, how’d you meet?”
“In a bar.”
“Oh my God, this is getting better by the second!”
“But I only know his first name, I think.”
“You’re kidding me!”
Trish told her about how he’d asked at the door if he’d see her again, and how she’d rushed off without his phone number.
“You didn’t!”
“I did.”
“Well!” Andrea put her hands on her hips. “You gotta do something!”
“Like what? Go to the police and file a missing persons report?”
“You could go on Match.com or Plenty of Fish.”
“Ya, and join all the other rejects and adulterers? I may’s well advertise on Craigslist. Under Antiques!”
“No way!” Andrea roared. “Hey, wait a minute,” she squealed with inspiration. “You can go on Facebook.”
All Trish knew about Facebook was that, without it, people like her nineteen-year-old niece would exist like hermits in a prehistoric cave.
“That’s how I tracked down Liam. We met at this party and when he wanted to give me his number, I thought what do I need some new guy in my life for when my two boys are doing just fine now their deadbeat dad’s working up in Fort Mac. But then I got to thinking what if I never see him again? And what if he’s destined to be the love of my life? So that’s when I went on Facebook and voilá!” Andrea waved the hand that wore a Claddagh ring.
Voilá wasn’t what Trish had in mind, but she let Andrea explain.
“See, you start with your friends, and it becomes like a kind of chain reaction. Your friends have friends who have friends and eventually you end up with this great big network. I mean, somebody’s bound to know someone who knows him.”
“But how can I search for him when I don’t know his last name, or if Adam is his first name? What if he was lying? Men do that!”
“You’re telling me!” Andrea threw her head back and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “But hey, sometimes you just have to take your chances! Look, if Madonna and JLo can snag a younger man, why can’t a hot chick like you?”
Coming next: An excerpt from the short story, Forbidden.
Read excerpts from You Never Know and Lost and Found
Reader reviews
Great Story Telling! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This book was very hard to put down once I started reading and the stories were well written and interesting. - Wayne Sundstrom, Saskatoon, Canada
Highly recommended! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This collection is an excellent read full of human stories that everyone can relate to. EGE, Victoria, Canada
You Never Know and other stories can be ordered from Amazon (paperback or e-book).
Directly through me, you can:
obtain a free watermarked pdf file if you agree to write a review, or
order an e-book (epub or pdf file) or paperback (postage extra depending on your location). For details, e-mail: dianeengelhardt2019@gmail.com.
Only just found this as I decided to be ill for a few days.
I confess I read mainly factual and to break it up with fiction I tend to read science fiction and gothic horror preferably written between 1750 and 1920, so this was totally different. I read it, reread it after five minutes and you definitely got me wondering what happened next! It was the way you made it come completely alive in your reading of it that made me jot book title down ready to find a bit later on today.
So thank you for something completely different.