BROADER AND STRONGER — LAURA BESLEY
/Twice you’ve had the dream, the one where you’re having sex with that dad from the school playground, you know the one who’s slightly broader and slightly stronger than the other dads and when he smiles at you—oh god, when he smiles at you!—you notice his teeth are slightly whiter and slightly straighter and you go home and try to make the kids eat the fruit you’ve chopped before they have a biscuit, then, like most days, you give up and they eat the biscuits and you eat the fruit and in between bites of apples and pears, you prepare a Bolognese sauce from scratch because you can smuggle in extra vegetables to make up for the lack of fruit and all the while you’re thinking about his broader stronger frame pressed against you, his lips against the back of your neck, and somehow you remember to ask about your son’s spelling test and your daughter’s art project and your husband’s meeting with the Big Client and you don’t even mind that no one asks you how your day was, about the fundraiser you’re organising for the local hospice where your mum is dying or that the physiotherapist you’ve been waiting months to see told you the nerve damage might be permanent and you don’t know who was more embarrassed when you burst into tears, and after dinner, when you’re clearing the table and washing up, you think of him again, and when you’re in the bath touching yourself, you imagine they’re his hands and you’re careful not to make any noise because for once you want everyone to forget about you and you don’t want anyone to shout “Mum, where are you?” or “Mum, what are you doing?” or “Kiera, where’s my squash racket?” and when you go to sleep, you dream about him again, but this time you dream that he’s stroking your face and telling you he loves you and now in the school playground you can’t look him in the eye because sex is one thing, but love; love is something else entirely.
Laura Besley is the author of micro fiction collection, 100neHundred (Arachne Press, 2021), and flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers (Dahlia Books, 2020). She has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. Her work has been nominated for Best Micro Fiction and her story, To Cut a Long Story Short, will appear in the Best Small Fiction anthology in 2021. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. She tweets @laurabesley
