The challenge? Write a story in exactly 6 sentences based on Denise’s one word prompt: BOND. Visit, comment, and write & post your own on SIX SENTENCE STORIES. The Café is open. Come as you are!

(Because setting boundaries and holding space for ourselves is OK)

She slid onto the padded stool at the end of the otherwise empty counter that snaked and double-backed on itself through the diner, still sweaty and now cold from a cloudy afternoon hike around every unmarked trail in the nearby nature preserve.             

If the world was going to slide back into the hell of the pandemic years, when everybody was looking daggers and paranoia over hunched shoulders, she needed to shore up her joy bucket and be able to answer all the ugly with something healing.

The muddy trail, slick and fragrant with noisy fallen leaves, ponds and lakes still moving freely to the damp wind’s gentle shove was one source of joy, but this greasy-spoon diner, with its red and white formica counters and clown-yellow signage, music mix of sixties and seventies rock, best hamburgers in town with a mound of crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside hashbrowns (if you please!) was another, different joy.

And as usual, it didn’t fail to please on this particular early evening; her battery was recharging already.

Until a guy, tight as a guitar string ready to snap, swung onto the stool next to her, his counter loop bent 90 degrees to her own, singing along to the music, shouting greetings to a kitchen staff that clearly didn’t know him, and murmuring the first few words of a series of bad jokes toward her one ear in an attempt to get her attention.

Still recharging, she ignored the mostly harmless and sadly awkward man and his loudly announced order of coffee, water, and one pancake smothered in strawberries and whipped cream; the only thing she was ready to bond with at that point was the burger: bacon, American cheese, grilled onion, thick dill pickles, the bun that could barely hold back rivers of juices running down her hands and arm.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2024)