Sunset Orange Crush, a short story, goes on sale today, August 1st, for $0.99 Kindle and Nook (available for Kindle app and Nook app on your tablet)!!!
I'm so excited to share with you my new short story! I hope you enjoy it. I hope you share it with your friends. And, I thank all of you for your helpful comments so far and all your support.
Just for you, my loyal blog readers, here's a free glimpse of the first few pages.
Happy reading!
SUNSET ORANGE CRUSH
a short story
by Audry Fryer
Dry
sand sifts through my fingers, slipping away like the years since I last walked
this beach.
It is early
August. While this time of year has held no special meaning for the majority of
my life, recently it took on greater
significance. One year ago, I marched
into the kitchen of a trendy Beverly Hills restaurant, grabbed a prep knife and
pinned a note displaying these three words, “I quit, Ali.” I went back to my apartment that echoed with
emptiness ever since my ex-boyfriend left with all his belongings and half of
mine. Determined to leave California far
behind, I packed up every last bit of what I had left. My imagination took me to far flung
destinations, France, Mexico, Tahiti, South Africa. I had saved enough money to take me anywhere
I wanted to go. The possibilities invigorated my sense of freedom. All I needed
was a compass to point me in the correct direction.
In my enthusiasm
for adventure, I grabbed for a box wedged in the back of my closet and perched high on a shelf. It proved heavier than I expected. I tried to keep my balance and almost succeeded,
almost. Its contents spilled in an avalanche across my hard wood floors. I heard a high pitched clink; the
unmistakable, dreadful sound of shattering glass. I sifted through the mess catching the tip
of my finger on a shard. I recoiled both from the pain and from the recognition
of what I had broken. I knew as I cleaned up the bits of glass mixed with a
pile of sand that I wouldn’t be heading to an exotic location, but to here, Lewes,
Delaware.
The last of the
sand escapes through my parted fingers with a small amount pooled in my
palm. I rub my hands together leaving a
few coarse grains clinging to my skin. I try to brush them away on the cotton
fabric of my cover-up with little success. I should know better. There’s always
a little bit of sand that follows you home, in the bottom of your beach bag, in
the cuff of your shorts or plastered to your flip-flops. Memories cling to the
corners of your mind like that, too.
“Do I know you?”
an older woman, robust in size, asks as she approaches me.
I turn and look at
the woman to see if she is someone recognizable. She gives me a warm smile sheltered by her
wide brimmed hat. Her white cover-up
billows, a cloud in the breeze. I shake
my head and say, “I think you may have me confused with someone else.”
“Oh, I’m sorry
dear,” the woman says. “I was hoping you
were the young lady I so enjoyed speaking with the last few summers. I’ve been worried about her. Last time I saw her, she was very sick.” The woman motions with her hand around her
head and whispers, “she was wearing a scarf.
Most unfortunate.”
“Oh, how sad,” I
say. The vision of this young woman stricken with illness, most likely cancer,
appears so clearly in my mind. It is as if I can see her standing on the shore,
gazing at the surf with the sea breeze whipping the scarf on her head like one
of those hurricane warning flags.
“Well, you have a
good day,” the woman says.
“Oh, uh, you too,”
I reply.
The woman nods and
continues down the slope of the dune. She shifts her weight carefully. Her
progress is slow and cautious. I watch her with an acute interest. Maybe I’m
worried she will fall. Maybe it’s something else. For whatever reason, my attention remains on
this woman when she glances back at me. Embarrassed, I wave at her. She doesn’t
seem to notice my awkward attempt at levity. Instead, she says, “I hope you
find what you lost.”
The woman turns,
almost as if she hadn’t said anything at all. I wonder if I imagined it. I
think about running after her and telling her I hadn’t been searching for
anything in the sand that I might have lost. Had I?
I carry this
question in my thoughts as my focus drifts away from the woman and meanders
across the hills and valleys of the massive sand dune that compromises the
lower tip of Delaware, a place referred to as The Point in Cape Henlopen State
Park. My gaze pauses at the short
lighthouse that punctuates the dune’s end. Maybe I am searching for one
thing. But, I’m not sure I could ever
recapture the magic of that summer.
It was in my last
days of innocence that my parents rented the seaside cottage for the
summer. That fall I would be heading off
to culinary school and part of me knew that my whole life was on the cusp of
changing irreversibly. I had these next
ten weeks to savor. And did I ever, like
a syrupy sweet salt water taffy, the kind that you could pull into long
delightfully sticky strands and spend the better part of an hour devouring.
My first
impression of Leah had been how her golden sunshine hair curled around her face
as she pedaled past me on her bike. “Follow me,” she simply said. I remember
obeying her orders though we never formerly met, hopping onto my own bike and
following in her wake. We rode across
the sleepy coastal town known less for its history of being “The first town in
the first state” than for its ferry destination linking it to the New Jersey
Cape. We entered the state park and
ditched our bikes here at The Point. We
talked, we laughed and a friendship like no other I’ve ever had before or after
was created. We became inseparable and
to our delight, people often wondered if we were twins. While my hair had deeper amber tones than
Leah’s and my skin tanned easily while Leah’s preferred to burn, our statures
and our mannerisms matched with an uncanny similarity. I tugged my ear whenever I was nervous, so
did Leah. I made up my own lyrics when I
couldn’t remember the words to a song, so did Leah. I loved black licorice
flavored salt water taffy, so did Leah. I had a crush on the boy who worked at
his uncle’s bait and tackle shop for the summer, so did Leah.
Want to read more?
I hope so!
Thanks so much!!!
For more about this short story, my other two novels and some fun facts about me
The Friends We Keep by Susan Mallery
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons
Friendship by Emily Gould
