What Women Want (or so I heard)

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.


The prompts: This story must contain the words: strawberry, blink, smile


What Women Want (or so I heard)

Beaufort sat in the well worn chair at his computer/eating table. Next to the screen he’d positioned a small mirror. His attention was currently split between the online dating tutorial and the mirror.

On the screen he read, “One way to let a woman know you are interested is to wink at her. Most women find this attractive in a man.” Beaufort turned to the mirror and blinked. For some reason, he couldn’t close just one eye at a time. He wondered if women might be twice as attracted to a blink as they would to a wink.

Multi-tasking, he reached for a slice of pizza as he continued his blinking exercise. The contortion initiated and oft-experienced pair of events: a slightly forced smile, followed by a generous “breaking of the wind”. An aficionado of such an event would have been brought to tears by the deft expertise Beaufort brought bear. He shoved the pizza into his mouth, moaning with satisfaction.

Leaning backwards with an agility that belied his girth, Beaufort tore himself away from his online tutorial and reached into the freezer located conveniently three feet away. He grabbed a bag of frozen fruit and some ice cream. Dairy and fruit, keys to a balanced diet, he chuckled to himself.

Everything suddenly went very wrong. Beaufort jumped out of his chair and quickly waddled over to an open space on the floor. Without a moment to waste, he jumped into the air and landed flat on his back. A strawberry and two grapes fountained out of his mouth and onto the floor.

He casually picked them up and thinking, waste not, want not, he popped the fruit into his mouth.

Back at the tutorial he read “Women are into astrology and love it when you ask them their sign.”

Word count 300