Home » Friday Fictioneers » Too Little, Too Late – Friday Fictioneers

Too Little, Too Late – Friday Fictioneers

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Hey, hey, hey there!  Hope all is well with you.  Thanks to Tracey and Rochelle‘s back and forth on my posted “Secret Admirer” pic (on Facebook), it got chosen as a prompt…

I will be most interested in seeing what others come up with!

Should you want to join in on the fun, click on Rochelle’s name for the rules and regs.  To simply enjoy reading the other stories, click on ze bleu frogue…

Genre:  Fiction

Word count:  Really?  Always 100!

Too Little, Too Late

Boxes packed, she took one more look around the place, trying to feel something.  Anything.  She couldn’t.  She was numb.

After years of working at what she thought would be a wonderful future, she finally accepted that she was the only one doing the building.

Every time she got to a point of wanting to give up, he turned on the charm; became the most attentive lover, the best partner and she’d be fooled into staying.

Not this time.  She was not going to waste the rest of her life with such a man.

He could keep his damn flowers.

130 thoughts on “Too Little, Too Late – Friday Fictioneers”

  2. Brave move, but the right one. You have to draw a line under misery in the end or it will eat you up. Nicely done, Dale. And nice picture, though can you tell me why it inspired so many stalker stories? 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Dear Dale,

    We seem to have written two chapters to the same story. Okay…similar themes. Okay, we used the same prompt. 😉
    This story oozes with strength and resolve. Well done.

    Shalom,

    Rochelle

    Liked by 1 person

    • Dear Rochelle,

      Indeed… and I didn’t do it on purpose (as you know, yours is the only one I read till I write mine…)

      I like to think so! (It does parallel a little part of my life…)

      Lotsa love,

      Dale

      Liked by 1 person

  5. I liked this take on the prompt, Dale. Kind of one that we will see a bit this week. But what I liked, is your line she was the only one doing the building… that added a lot to the story. So true.

    btw! Are you the ‘Dale’ that supplied this photo? I’m stumped trying to figure out who or what ‘paudavis’ is on the boxes.

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      • Oh, great line! I’m going to remember that one. 🙂

        A sad but well written story. I have a friend whose husband sent her roses when she announced she was going. She felt about the same: no more hopeful signs, phony pleas, empty promises, guilt trips.

        It really is a sad commentary on society when we see a bouquet and think a stalker might be lurking. All these thriller movies, maybe? My light bulb blinked on a book launch…memoirs by Ebeneezer Scrooge…proceeds to go to the Tim Cratchett Foundation for Crippled Children. (Would take more than 100 words but it was a thought. 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

        • Not so much stalker as last resort! I had a boyfriend like that. Turned on the charm juat as I was fed up. I was young and naive enough to fall for it back then. Till I wasn’t.

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  7. I never got flowers in my life (well, maybe this week I did, which shows you how pathetic it can get when you have to write a STORY about it!) but I have sent a few in my lifetime. In fact, I sent a dozen roses to a girl several years ago and she kept them in a vase … LONG after they were wilted! Haha! She had never been sent roses before. Who knew?

    Rochelle is right. Chapter 2, good resolve, nailed the ending, tastes great, less filling. Nice.

    PS. In case the present “paramour” doesn’t work out, you have my blog page. “We’ll ALWAYS have Friday Fictioneers.”

    Music, maestro, please!

    “You must remember theesh,
    A quiche is just a quiche,
    A pie is just a pie …”

    Liked by 1 person

  18. I have a friend who works as a receptionist at Corporate. One day she called and said I could have a bouquet that had been sent as a makeup gift to an angry wife. The woman refused to accept them. So, I had another friend drop them off at Connie’s work with a card from me.

    I would have rather sent pasta, but hey, free is free.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Pingback: Friday Fictioneers — If Flowers Could Talk | Sarah Potter Writes

  23. Tell him, girl. Who wants his mouldy flowers? For some reason, I’ve never been able to trust the guys who’ve been into the bunches of flowers thing. Give me a plant guy any day — a plant has roots and is intended to last, like his love. That being said, I wouldn’t say no to a bunch of pink roses or bright red dahlias…just occasionally.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Pingback: An Enchanted Charm: Fiction Friday | It's a long story …

    • Thank you, Rowena.
      And it’s all Michelle’s fault for snatching it (and asking if she can use It, of course!) 😉

      Like

  37. I’m reading a book on a similar character who ran away from her husband. He also charmed her back every time until she had enough and walked out. Sadly some people don’t get that relationships are a two way street.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I was flabbergasted to get them! Doesn’t happen every day, does it? (Then again, if it did, one would get blasé)…

      Like

  39. Funny how the charm never works when ‘normal life’ is happening. Good for her that she doesn’t fall for it any longer. Great story, Dale.

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Hi again. Thought I’d pop in for a visit and read some of your past stories, but I can’t! May I suggest you add an Archives or Calendar to your sidebar so someone can to back further than your last five posts.

    Liked by 1 person

      • Did you figure this out? A person can scroll and scroll and scroll through days, weeks and months and years — but an Archives gets you to the month you may want and all the posts for that month.
        A Calendar gets you a month and when you put your cursor on a day, it says what you posted that day. A list of categories will show the reader everything you’ve written on a particular subject.
        For blogs that have a Home page, you can usually see the first few lines of a month’s worth of posts, but to go back farther you still have to scroll and scroll and scroll… 😦
        Now I have one more suggestion, seeing as you have posted for so many months. Go into your widgets again and do your archives as a drop-down category rather than having each listed individually.

        Like

    • Well there Christine! Thanks for the heads up. You can now go and stalk me all over the place 😉
      I’m thrilled you even want to…

      Like

      • Stalk? Stock? Maybe squawk. 😉
        Every now and then I like to wander back into other bloggers’ past posts and see what gems might be buried there.

        I must be bipolar, though. On Wed I was feeling blue and on Friday I got this inspiration for a really humorous tale: “The FF Family Picnic.” A minor murder, but mayhem aplenty. 🙂 Even if I never have the courage to actually post the mayhem part I’ll e-mail you a copy so you can have a good laugh, too.

        Liked by 1 person

    • Ha Ha! Not quite. Had water damage so my floors got redone. Didn’t have room to store two rooms’ worth of stuff so it went into storage. After the job was done, all that stuff came back…

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