So Long “Best By Date” by Shoshauna Shy

It dawns on you that the moment you knew he’d never call again didn’t come when you emerged from the shower, skin flushed and steamed, the sleeves of your bathrobe knotted loosely about your hips as you scooped your phone up from the nightstand. He had left five hours before, rushing out not because he wanted to rush but because he had to pick his ex-wife up from the airport, he said.

And it didn’t come that afternoon as you watched from the front window as the Evership school bus pulled up and burped forth a covey of children toting satchels to a cluster of waiting mothers with toddlers on their hips, your phone no willing accomplice in delivering his voice.

Nor did it come the next day as you entered the kitchen with a bag of groceries (blueberries, cinnamon, oats) for a cobbler you hoped he’d like. You stepped into the room and put your phone on airplane mode because the less accessible you were, the more likely he’d try to access you, of course–but no text, no call, no emailed memes tucked themselves between political donation pleas and Gate A travel specials. Not even by midnight.

It came after that when you lay in bed at dawn surfacing to consciousness remembering this was the day he’d said his wife would be in Coeur d’Alene shopping, and you two could drive to Castle Rock. But did he suggest that before you started the argument about how much you wanted a child–or was it after? You have a good memory. Why can’t you recall that sequence?

And that’s when the bedroom grows larger, the shadows darker under the drawn blinds, and the morning lengthens itself like a cat stretching to its feet. The moment he actually decided not to call you happened already. It happened while he lay beside you that last night together. Before he laced his boots for the airport. Before he even left your bed.

This is when it all becomes obvious: your grandmother’s clock with its skritchy secondhand making its rounds; the school bus idling outside as the neighborhood children climb aboard; the mothers waving, blowing kisses, offering up farewells in a melody you hear yourself singing.

All by yourself.

SHOSHAUNA SHY is an editor for 101Words. She was one of the seven finalists for the 2021 Fish Flash Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Awards in 2023, nominated for the Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction awards, and shortlisted for the Flash Fiction Contest Awards conducted by South Shore Review.

Photo courtesy of Shoshauna Shy

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