by Melissa Flores Anderson

I am tired of the holiday parties and the cheer, the glitter that permeates every surface of my house and office. But here I am, alone, at one more party. Smiling and wearing a Santa hat because everyone expects a certain level of festiveness. Mandatory joy. I tell myself I will stay for the minimum, for one glass of wine, and then make my excuses to leave.

He walks in, a perfectly tailored suit on his frame, the thicker heft of worsted wool versus the linen he wore all summer. He doesn’t look my way, and I fight the urge to drift into his sight line. I’ve had a thing for a man in a well-fitted suit since that holocaust movie with Liam Neeson that I saw at 15, a weird starting point for desire, but that is how attraction works.

Like how I didn’t notice him for months and one day he came into focus, like I’d opened the aperture on an old camera to let in more light. He wanders my way. I stay at the party and listen to him talk about ski resorts he’s visited and say, “I’ve never been.”

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Melissa Flores Anderson is a 3x BOTN and 1x Pushcart Prize-nominated Latinx Californian whose creative work has been published in Maudlin House, The Write Launch and Rejection Letters. She has a novelette and a chapbook forthcoming in 2024. She is a reader/editor for Roi Fainéant Press.