{"id":61,"date":"2024-03-11T11:25:07","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T08:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reflexfiction.com\/?p=61"},"modified":"2024-03-11T11:25:32","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T08:25:32","slug":"when-plan-a-goes-awry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reflexfiction.com\/when-plan-a-goes-awry-flash-fiction-by-lisa-ferranti\/","title":{"rendered":"When Plan A Goes Awry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Dani\u2019s hands are dirty. She digs in soil beneath the rose bushes in the condo\u2019s community garden, ignoring Blake, who\u2019s weeding next to her. She forgot her gloves, and her fingernails collect grime. She tries not to picture her nails raking Blake\u2019s back just an hour before. The <em>audacity<\/em>, she thinks, trying to avoid other \u2018A\u2019 words that crowd her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She\u2019s still surprised she\u2019s attracted to a man the same age as her father, a detail she\u2019s concealed from him on their weekly calls. Another concealed detail: Blake is married. The disease Blake\u2019s wife has: <em>Alzheimer\u2019s<\/em>. It doesn\u2019t absolve Dani, but she uses the knowledge to assuage her guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mrs Crandle, the condo association president, gives her a purse-lipped smile, and Dani nods, looks away. She imagines that everyone sees a scarlet \u2018A\u2019 emblazoned across her chest. She recalls the family-folklore her dad tells: how at age three she ate a little wooden \u2018A\u2019 tile from the Scrabble game. She wonders now if that incident branded her somehow, marked her as a future <em>Adulteress<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A prickly weed pokes her finger and she yanks her hand upward, scraping it against the bush\u2019s thorns. A line of red dots appears on her knuckles. Blake removes one glove, pulls a white handkerchief from his pocket, offers it to her, their arms brushing in the exchange. She pulls away as if her skin has been singed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She remembers her highest scoring Scrabble word ever, during a game with her dad when she was younger: <em>Vixen<\/em>, the X on a triple letter, plus double word. She was so proud of herself, the word holding no meaning then other than <em>Score<\/em>!, a time when her plan didn\u2019t include being a mistress, when all \u2018A\u2019 stood for was <em>Apple<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dani\u2019s hands are dirty. She digs in soil beneath the rose bushes in the condo\u2019s community garden, ignoring Blake, who\u2019s weeding next to her. She forgot her gloves, and her fingernails collect grime. She tries not to picture her nails raking Blake\u2019s back just an hour before. The audacity, she thinks, trying to avoid other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>When Plan A Goes Awry - reflexfiction.com - Betting Odds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dani\u2019s hands are dirty. She digs in soil beneath the rose bushes in the condo\u2019s community garden, ignoring Blake, who\u2019s weeding next to her. She forgot her gloves, and her fingernails collect grime. She tries not to picture her nails raking Blake\u2019s back just an hour before. 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