Horatio should not leave the party with ophelia by Timothy c. Goodwin

but we exit the opening night party together into the deadest of Colorado’s winter anyway, tipsy on our stage manager’s improvised cocktails, on a week's worth of backstage glances. We've been warned about ice under fresh snow, so you cling to my arm as we navigate back to the hotel they keep us out-of-town actors at.

You let on that you were never sure about Him, your new diamond ring that couldn’t make it out for opening night because of a callback, that wants you to shift your love of NYC to Florida, where he’s hot, where he sees a future for himself booking all the regional Mamma Mia!s. 

Fucking Florida.

I tell you how I was introduced to a friend of a friend, and we just dated, and then we just dated more, and then we just moved in together, and then we just got married. How she’s lost to a salary during the days, and I book catering gigs at night.

Hardly the fairy tale, I say.

You squeeze my arm.

He’ll be here Tuesday, you say.

She’s coming in for a weekend. Depending on work.

The snowfall hisses at us.

And of course we take a fall: We are not native Coloradoanians, you say, and I laugh at Coloradoanians, and you roll over onto me, and after looking at each other for a few shivering breaths you say Horatio in your Ophelia voice and I say Ophelia in my Horatio voice, trying to script the thing we each wish we had held out for as we draw a curtain of mountains around us, the ice underneath us groaning, ready to crack.

Timothy C Goodwin has work included in Hotch Potch, Flash Frog, HAD, Trash Cat, Twin Pies, Dishsoap Quarterly (Best Small Fictions 2025), and elsewhere. (@)timothycgoodwin(.com)