First Attempt at a Short Story

As many people know for a long time I've spoken about writing a book for a LONG, long time! Well here's my first attempt at a short story, I know it's not a whole book but it's a start. It's for a writing competition and the subject is 'Teenage Love' Let me know what you think.


'His stomach turned to the point that he was nearly sick and his heart began racing at a pace he was unaware it was capable of. Tony had waited a long time for this moment, thirty-one years to be exact. Ever since she had dumped him on her door step. He remembered the moment well, she had informed Tony that she could be with him no longer, it wasn’t him it was her.

He wanted to hate her, really hate her and for the first two or three days he was able to convince himself that he was better off without her and that given that they had only been dating for little over a month it hadn’t really affected him. But inside it was killing him, everywhere he looked there she was, the pub they enjoyed their first date in, the faint smell of her perfume lingering on his pillow. Tony was not the sort of person to fall for a girl so easily, as his previous record with women showed, but in this instance he became quickly infatuated.

It took Tony some time to get over the break-up. In the weeks following he would drive to her place of work and past of her house in the hope of catching a glimpse of the women he had fallen for so easily. But she was nowhere to be seen, had she disappeared. They had no mutual friends, so Tony was unable to check up on how she was doing. He wanted to hear that she had sunk into a depression and missed him deeply but he knew this was probably not true.

Time turned out to be a great healer for Tony and when he met his wife-to-be Sue through a work colleague, he believed he had found the woman he was meant to be with. Months into the marriage, however, Tony realised that he had married and fallen for Sue for all the wrong reasons. While he had strong feelings towards Sue, deep down he knew that the pair had only married because no options were left open to each other. They had reached their early thirties in a reasonably serious relationship and given their fear of ending up alone, became married. On a number of occasions Tony was ready to tell his wife that he had made the wrong decision in marrying her, but every time he came to carrying out the deed he would put it off until the next night, and the next night. When Sue announced that she was pregnant, and was ecstatic about it, Tony knew he could not leave his wife to bring their child up alone, it would not be fair. So he stuck around, convincing himself he was doing the right thing.

Tony heard from a work colleague about a website where you could contact old school friends and new instantly that this would be his last opportunity in contacting her. Joining up to the year he left school, Tony saw a few names he briefly recognised, but the one he was really looking for was not there. Katherine Smith was nowhere to be seen. Then he saw another name, and his heart sank. Katherine McCarthy. She had married, to an Irishman it seemed. Clicking on her name to look at her profile, a small part of Tony did not want it to be her. But could he be suprised? A girl like that was always going to find someone to love her.

But here she was, Katherine Smith, thats how he would remember her, staring back at him in between two strikingly good looking children. The caption underneath the picture explained them to be Jack, 17, he looked like a surfer, long straggly blond hair and the same deep, striking eyes as his mother. On the other flank stood Lucy, 19. A dark, slim brunette who looked as beautiful as her mother did at the same age. Tony remembered Katherine at that age well.

He wanted to write to see how she was, but how could he? She had two children she clearly adored from a man who no doubt she adored. Tony imagined her husband to be a lawyer or some sort in London. A dark, tall, strikingly good looking good man who would and could provide anything his beautiful woman wanted. That was the man Katherine deserved and no doubt had. Besides she wasn’t going to find Tony the slightest bit attractive anymore.

Since his teenage days, it was fair to say Tony had let himself ago. During those days he saw himself as a reasonably good looking bloke, with a full head of hair and in reasonably good shape due to regular swims, but now he was a different person and shape altogether. Most of the hair had fallen off his head and he had ballooned thanks to very little sport indulgence in the last thirty years. You would not recognise him.

-----

‘Dear Katherine, new friends have joined Friends Reunited.’ She was used to receiving these e-mails, they were obviously some sort of ploy by the website owners to get members to keep visiting the website. Usually, due to her scepticism of the marketing technique, Katherine ignored the emails but today she had nothing better to do, so found herself typing the website into her Internet browser.

Logging into her personal account, she came across the usual names that had been members of the website for months. Then she saw a name that she hadn’t seen in a very long time. Tony Crofts. She had thought about Tony now and then since their teenage days and often felt guilty about the way she had ended things with him. She could not remember the day too well but remembered a sense of guilt for a number of weeks after the incident. Tony had just been too nice and fell in love with her far too easily. At the time she wanted someone a bit ‘harder’, someone who would look after if ever she needed them to. After spending a night in A & E after an ex-boyfriend had started a fight with someone who turned out to be an amateur boxer for looking daring to look at Katherine, she realised this was the wrong type of boyfriend to be looking for.

Eventually Katherine found happiness and married a high-flying city worker, originally from a suburb just outside of Dublin. Her husband, Tim’s job provided enough money for Katherine to spend most of her time at home, fulfilling her hobbies, which mostly involved tending to her prized garden. She lived a happy and comfortable life. It seemed, however, that life became too comfortable for Tim and he returned home from work one evening to inform his wife that he was leaving her for a slimmer, younger much more blonde model. The divorce had been long ongoing and had turned bitterly unpleasant in recent weeks. Katherine wanted the whole episode to come to an end. Her confidence had reached a new low and the only thing that kept her going were her two children, who had refused to speak to their father since the episode and had been at their mother’s side whenever she needed them.

Katherine had wanted to tell the world about her situation, what a pig her husband had been. Of course it was partly for the attention. But how do you write about a husband leaving you for some, horrible, china doll looking bimbo without sounding desperate and needy. What she really needed, wanted, was a man who would love her forever, and wanted no-one else in their life. But how do you write that? Could Tony be the man she was looking for? He had been such a nice, sweet guy, what she remembered, but in his personal profile he talked about having a daughter he adored and happily married. Plus he probably still hated her for the way she ended their relationship.

The more she thought, however, she was doing nothing wrong. It was merely an old friend getting in contact with someone that she dated thirty-odd years ago, it was not as if anything was going to develop from it. Suddenly, she found her fingers tapping away at the keyboard.
‘Hi Tony, I’m not sure if you remember me but, if you do, you may remember me as the horrible woman that dumped you all those years ago. It’s been a long time, how have you been?’
Should she send it. Katherine sat, staring at the computer screen for at least ten minutes, her heart t pounding so hard in her chest she could see her t-shirt beating up and down. Her index finger reached for the mouse and clicked ‘Send’.

As soon as the message was sent, a sense of panic rushed down over Katherine. Did that ‘dumping’ part sound like gloating? Oh my god, she thought, what if he saw it as a dig? Should she write again?

--

While Tony sat staring at this beautiful woman, the computer let out a ring to inform him that he had been sent a message. He ignored it originally, but just as the message prompt in the corner of his screen disappeared Tony caught a glimpse of the sender. McCarthy it said as it sunk into the pit of the screen. Could it really be her? Just as Tony fumbled for the computer mouse and clicked on the screen, before he had a chance to read the message, in stormed his wife into the study. ‘What the hell are you up to? Dinner’s on the table, I’ve been calling you for five minutes’. Tony, without even thinking about his actions, turned to his wife ‘I’m leaving you’.