Hopscotch

By Melissa Flores

Lilly left her lunch on the kitchen counter after skipping breakfast in the Monday morning chaos after a long weekend. Now, at noon following a morning of meetings, her stomach growled. She looked down a long block of afternoon meetings and tried to ignore her body, but the gnaw persisted. She opted for the quickest pick-up option and put an order in for a croissant and a latte at the chain coffeeshop near the student union.

She’d been avoiding the place lately, or she’d been avoiding Charles. Sat away from him in meetings, skipped evening events if she knew he was attending. Ever since he’d gone to that ribbon cutting with the woman Lilly suspected might be more than a friend, she’d been trying to rein in her crush.

Lilly walked across the quad, along the route she’d taken with Charles many times, close enough to bump elbows, when she thought his proximity meant something more than just navigating a narrow path. When he used to sometimes touch her arm when he talked and responded right away to her evening texts.

Outside the student union someone had drawn large squares in a hopscotch formation on the sidewalk, each square a different color outline. She wasn’t paying attention and nearly collided with Charles as he walked out of the coffeeshop, dressed in a gray pressed suit. Lilly was underdressed in a pair of worn jeans and green sneakers, a long-sleeve shirt that fit all wrong.

“Who can walk by hopscotch squares and not do them?” she asked Charles.

Charles paused. “Me. I can.”

“We played this on the blacktop as kids, and you’d toss a stick or stone, and then you’d have to skip that square.”

Lilly thought he would continue back to the office, but he stayed, watching her, waiting. So she hopped on one sneakered shoe, her foot covering up the 1 and then 2 and then 3. She planted both feet at 4 and 5, then back on one foot for 6, and so forth. She was done before she had time to be self-conscious. He laughed and released that wide grin she loved, and she caught the warm glow from it, the chill in the air dissipating.

“Now you try,” she said.

Charles held out his hand with his coffee for her to take, he hopped on one foot in his black wingtips. She smiled back at him as he landed on the 10, as he took his coffee back, his fingers grazing against hers, and she was sure whatever she felt was mutual. At least for the moment.

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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

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