Written for Ficly.com, a website that asks writers to tell a story in 1024 characters. This is just over that.

My brother watched me from across the armrest with his signature smile, ears raised, looking like an ass. Last night he told me that this was the one. I looked on into the restaurant from the front seat of the Taurus that I had bought last year for too much money. Now I was using it to help my brother find someone he met at one of those free-coffee two-minute speed dating groups that try to get you paired up with someone equally lonely and tired of rejection for the fair price ten bucks a night.

They hold meetings on Tuesday nights in the gymnasium of a local community college. It’s Friday afternoon. My brother is still following this woman. There has to be a law somewhere against this.

I’m forty years old. I don’t know what I’m doing. The car engine putters in the frigid November air, and I cut it, looking for the woman with green eyes like Spring and short dark hair. The wind knocks a slew of brown leaves like a thousand tiny auburn umbrellas down the two foot wide excuse for a sidewalk, and my brother looks at me, grinning. Again.

I watch as a woman with green eyes like Spring and short dark hair enters the cafe holding a man’s hand. My brother doesn’t notice. I stick the car into gear and pull out of the space, my turning signal clicking nervously, loudly, like a dusty record played too many times. I tell him we’ll look for her somewhere else in town, and ask him if he’s thought about what he’ll say when he sees her.

Originally on Ficly: http://ficly.com/stories/15590

-Adam