Dinner with Friends
by Melissa Flores Anderson
Charles ignores Lilly’s texts on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. When he doesn’t respond, she never mentions the messages when he sees her in the office, like they’ve both agreed not to discuss it.
On Saturday, he goes out with friends, a couple, for dinner. They have a drink before they settle at a table, where they open a bottle of a local red. Marlee and Dennis are friends from before his divorce and they ask about Erin.
“She’s good, I think,” Charles says. “Haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Time for you to move on,” Marlee says. “It’s been a few years now.”
Charles sips his wine and winces.
“I was seeing someone, but then the promotion came up.”
He liked Marina, who worked for an advocacy group a couple towns over. Single mom, a do-gooder, smarter than most of the people he worked with at the university and outdoorsy. But like Erin, she didn’t understand the after-hours commitments a job like his required. The last time they had tickets for a concert, he’d had to cancel for an emergency strategy meeting over some personnel issue that came up. Marina had suggested they take a break.
“You need to find balance, Charlie,” Dennis said. “More to life than work.”
Charles finishes off his glass and pours himself another.
“This is enough of a social life for now.”
As their main dishes arrive, his phone pings and he looks down at it. A text from Lilly.
She’s sent him a photo of a stuffed turtle and the words: turtle or tortoise? It’s part of a running joke with them because the mascot at the university where they work is a sea turtle, but a long ago alum donated artwork of a tortoise that hangs in the lobby of their building.
“Look at that smile there,” Marlee says between a bite of pasta. “Not sure whatever was going on with that the woman you were seeing is over.”
“Oh, this is work, a colleague.”
“No one I know smiles like that about work on a Saturday night, Marlee says. “Who is she?”
“Just a colleague. Maybe a friend. Nothing else.”
“Are you sure about that?” Dennis says.
Charles isn’t always sure.
After the meal, when he is home, he pours an ounce of bourbon and scrolls up through Lilly’s texts. She sends him photos of the sunrise, or bad weather, or sometimes funny memes she finds online. Pictures of the ocean, turtles and tortoises, like the most recent one. Sometimes she just asks him about his day or says she knows how hard he’s been working. He sends a smiley face and a sends back a reply. I think you mean axolotl.
He watches the phone for the three dots and they appear. They joke back and forth for an hour, and he relaxes into the conversation. At 9 p.m., he puts his phone in another room. He’s tipsy and won’t be able to stop himself from responding, and it’s too late for colleagues to be chatting. Especially when one of them is married.
Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx Californian who lives with her husband and son. Her creative work has been featured in more than 40 literary venues and anthologies, including swamp pink, Chapter House and HAD. She is a reader/editor with Roi Fainéant Press. She has co-authored a novelette, “Roadkill,” (ELJ Editions) and a chapbook “A Body in Motion,” (JAKE). Her first full-length short story collection “All and Then None of You” is out September 2025 (Cowboy Jamboree). Follow her on Twitter/Bluesky @melissacuisine or IG/Threads @theirishmonths. Read her work at melissafloresandersonwrites.com.
