Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction Challenge

 So, Chuck Wendig is having an interesting Flash Fiction Challenge over at terribleminds.com. The idea is to write 200 words, then next week take someone else's 200 words and run with them, then someone else's, etc., etc. until we've all gotten through the holidays and ended up with 1000 word stories. 

I'm intrigued. So, here's mine. It's 268 words. I suck at sticking to specifications apparently. I'm interested to see where it goes.

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It was some time before she could think of him without bitterness. Longer than it should have been, probably.  After all, their time together had been short.  But Alina knew that the impact a person had on your life was not necessarily measured in time. Her father, after all, had nearly twenty years to impress himself on her soul, and, in the end, he didn’t matter. She barely blinked when he died.

But, the boy.  He was different. She had spent only a few hours with him at the retreat. She hadn’t even gotten his name. He had introduced himself as the son of one of the trainers. He hadn’t given his name or asked for hers. That hadn’t bothered her at the time. It had felt like a beginning. She was sure they would have plenty of time to learn the details of each other’s lives.

He hadn’t acted like he knew who she was. That was lovely. Was it possible that he really didn’t know who she was?  He had just talked to her like she was a girl. He had asked to share her table, offered to fetch her a hot cocoa, which she refused.  He had complimented her drawing, talked about the walking paths near the lodge that he planned to walk the next day. It was the kind of conversation she had seen many times, but had never been a part of before.

She looked for him, of course, the next day.  And the day after that. Part of her watched for him the rest of the retreat week. But, he never reappeared.