Author: Philip Ekstrom

She walked into the donut shop looking like a daffodil. Yellow blouse, light green slacks, standing straight and tall with a quiet presence that looked the world straight in the face. She stepped aside to let others pass as she scanned the room.
Her gaze momentarily rested on me, then moved on. When she finished looking once at everyone, she frowned and started another scan. Ending her second try, the flower wilted and she turned to leave, then turned back and walked up to the counter.
A minute later, cup and donut in hand, she turned to survey the crowded room again. There weren’t many free seats so I waved her over to my table. I had waited half an hour for the guy I was supposed to meet and had been about to leave, but she looked interesting.
“I guess I missed my pen-pal”, she said.
“Oh?” I said, “Please tell.”
“I belong to a letter-writing club. We send actual, carefully constructed sentences written out by hand on real note paper. No pictures. It’s the exact opposite of texting. I even bought a fountain pen. I’m here to finally meet the one I write to, but I’m late and she must have left.”
She looked hard at me. ”With your red hair I thought you might be her, but you are a guy.”
I had trouble keeping a straight face. This was too good to be real.
“You must be looking for Taylor Partridge.”
“You know her?”
“I’m Taylor Partridge.”
“But…’
“I get that a lot, with Taylor Swift splashing our name all over the news. You must be Jordan Jones, but not a guy like I was expecting.”
We both laughed.
“This is going to be fun.”