He turned to face her, his hair tinted, his body lean from running at least three miles every day. What he wanted to say, he hid, inhaled to the count of four and exhaled the same.
What he did say, “It’s not you. It’s me.”
That was true. He was terrified of growing older. When he turned fifty-five, instead of having a small dinner party with close friends, good food and fine wine, he ran the Solstice 10K race.
Body was becoming more important to him every birthday, and her body, with its sags and creases, reminded him of his own fate. In the mirror he saw arms brittle as kindling. She was the proof he was losing his youth, and he began to idealize the young. Not that the rest of the hemisphere wasn’t caught in the web of tight skin and bouncy butts but he was a man of extremes. With each year, his yearning for a younger woman increased. He had difficulty not making passes at his daughter’s high school friends. Radiant, innocent, perky and those firm, unmarked bodies.
He knew this obsession was unhealthy, a cliché; yet he could not stop thinking of what it would be like to run his hand across a stomach without moles and stretch marks. Just to feel smoothness again, trace the curve of a moist back with its blush to become a woman. That newness he wanted to taste like an apricot waiting for his teeth to cut the flesh—the juice oozing between his lips, his tongue alive again.
Possibilities trickled down his chin.
FlashFlood is brought to you by National Flash-Fiction Day UK, happening this year on 27th June 2015.
In the build up to the day we have now launched our Micro-Fiction Competition (stories up to 100 words) and also our annual Anthology (stories up to 500 words). So if you have enjoyed FlashFlood, why not send us your stories?
More information about these and the Day itself available at nationalflashfictionday.co.uk. 
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