short story snippets

snippet #1

*disclaimer: this has been betaed .... by me. at 2:20 am. just now. took me about 2 hours to go through. i originally wrote this january 20, 2020, and it was written in present tense, but i while editing, i changed it to past sentence, because i find that easier to write in and stay in. i think i changed all the present tense verbs to past tense, but i might have missed a few. i also added about 500-600 words & did a whole lot of punctuation and grammar fixes lol. it's probably still a mess, but it's definitely less of a mess than it was originally. i'll probably end up coming back during the day once i've slept and edit it a bit more lol, but i'm just gonna publish it now bc i doubt anyone is gonna read it before i do that.*

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she had been waiting in front of the parking lot for probably about 30 minutes, and had finally started debating on whether or not she should go back inside the building, or stay outside incase her ride pulled up the moment she decided to go inside. she knew it probably wouldn't happen, but she still refused to give up hope - her stubbornness might be a flaw she would need to address in the future considering what her situation looked like. not that it was fully her fault, but. it probably didn't help her.

there was at least 3 inches of snow on the ground at that point, and the wind was blowing her hair in every direction. if she pressed her thumb and index finger together, she was barely able feel it, but she was definitely able to see the color of her skin change from red to white from the pressure, and watched as the color change spread from the center to the whole tip of the finger.

this was the third time her boyfriend had been late picking her up - honestly, she wasn't even sure why she continued to ask him to pick her up, why she always agreed when he offered, let alone why he had always offered in the first place when he had never followed through once. she should've taken luke up on his offer when he said that he could bring her home, because of course he already knew her boyfriend would probably be late, if he showed up at all - but her stubbornness reared it's ugly head; so she had said she would wait, and that it would be fine.

luke was right and it was not fine, but more often than not, he seemed to be right about her boyfriend recently. this probably should tell her something, considering luke knew her best, and could usually tell when someone wasn't a good match for her. she could make her own decisions though, much like she did when she had decided to start dating steven, and to be fair to her, her decisions usually yielded better results. this particular decision, unfortunately so far, had not.

finally she decided she needed to suck up her pride and call luke - very truthfully, she needed to take advantage of still having feeling in her fingers before they officially went numb. she just had to hope that he'd both pick up his phone, and be willing to come back to the university to pick her up. the phone rung one, two, three times - she was finally about to just hang up and call it quits, when thankfully, he picked up.

"sam?" luke's voice came through the phone; he sounded confused and concerned, which was fair enough, really.

"hey! listen i'm sorry about arguing with you before about steven picking me up, and i know you warned me that he wouldn't come, but i'm fucking freezing and i have a gut feeling that he's just not coming at this point. can you please come pick me up? if you can't, or don't want to because you're pissed, that's totally fine i can c-" she begun; apologetic after she'd finally put her pride to the side.

"no no, it's fine. i can absolutely come get you sweetheart, don't worry about it. i'll be there in like 5 minutes," luke cut her off - he was sweet, and likely would rather put their argument to the side for the time being so she didn't get badly sick. basic human decency unfortunately had become the new definition for sweet when your boyfriend accidentally leaves you in the cold once or three times within the same month - it was definitely a problem, and she definitely needed to address it soon.