A Painful Reminder

I know I took another month off from writing. I somewhat like where I'm taking the Lou and Cat story, but I also feel like I'm hitting a snag. I'm hoping this will fill in a piece of the puzzle and also get me back on track.

This week's [Fiction] Friday topic: Your Main Character picks a sliver of glass from their sleeve and gravely inspects it...(now keep writing)

This is a continuation from my posts on June 25th, July 2nd, July 9th, August 6th, August 20th and October 1st....in case you want to go back to the beginning.

A Painful Reminder

After making several rest stops along the way home, Lou returned to his house at around four a.m.. He could easily get some sleep for a few hours before opening his veterinary clinic for the day. However, he wasn’t planning to stick around and potentially run into Cat again. She had to have somehow found out what had happened five years ago, or she wouldn’t have picked such a sadistic song for him to sing at the karaoke bar. He didn’t want to face her again. He’d let her move on and forget about him.

Lou started packing up his clothes and other necessity items, filling his car as much as it could handle. He wrote a rent check to his landlord to cover June and July and left a note with the check that he would not be returning. He would send for his furniture and other items in a few weeks, once he knew where he wanted to settle.

The next step was to think of a new name. It was difficult enough to come up with something as inconspicuous as Lou Ames. He used his maternal grandpa’s first name and his maternal grandma’s maiden name, which seemed to work well. Maybe he’d use his paternal grandparents’ names this time. Except he didn’t think anyone would believe he was Melvin Pfeiffer.

Lou took one more look around his house to make sure there was nothing else he missed. He opened his closet again and noticed his old gray hooded sweatshirt lying in a heap on the floor. He didn’t remember seeing it there before, but he figured that was what happened with a clean closet. He grabbed it by the sleeve and felt a small prick on his left hand. Wincing in pain, he dropped the sweatshirt and went to the bathroom to grab a bandage. Then he returned to his room and picked up the sweatshirt again, this time more gingerly. Lou held the offending sleeve up to the light and saw something shiny sticking out of it. It was a sliver of glass. He opened his nightstand drawer and found a pair of tweezers. Pulling out the glass from his sleeve, he inspected it closely, with the gravest of expressions on his face. He remembered that the last time he wore this sweatshirt he had doused Dr. Shipp’s office with gasoline and then watched it burst into flames when he threw the lit match at the glass window. This piece of glass must have lodged itself in his sweatshirt before he ran away. He was surprised that he never got rid of the sweatshirt to begin with, but he was not thinking clearly at the time.

Just then, his phone buzzed with a text message from Cat.

Where R U? I’m coming back to LA 2day. Can we meet for lunch?

Lou deleted the text, shut off his phone and buried it in the trash. He then wrapped the piece of glass in a tissue and threw it in along with the phone. Time to move on before his past caught up to him again.