keyword "reticent" title "of a feather" in misc. flash fiction

She was reticent to talk about it with her family or her friends but she knew she’d have to break it off with him. They’d met when he was working the bird desk at the biggest pet store in the area and she was looking for a present for her niece. He was just so passionate, he was just so knowledgeable, just so… nice. So kind. He listened, really listened.

She’d spent her teens and most of her twenties chasing after boys who played guitar and boys who thought they were men that also played guitar. Deep brooding “complicated” types that wore their emotional trauma, real or imagined, like sheriff badges and were happy to similarly deputize her into emotional trauma with their own cool indifference and acid condescension.

He didn’t try and sell her anything she didn’t need or cost her anything she couldn’t space, either in her nieces’ cockatiel or in the matters of their love. He was honest in what he needed and what he could provide back to her. That one would’ve gotten him a larger commission but it didn’t have the temperament to be the pet for a child. Renegotiating his student loans gave him anxiety attacks, he didn’t know how to fix a car and didn’t particularly want to. Always laid it out true.

She worked as a lobbyist for environmental groups in the state capital, however, and eventually her work was noted which lead to opportunities in Washington. Her skills translated and it had been her dream since college to get there. There would’ve been no such instant understanding of his skills in another town, though. He was great at what he did not because of some connection or a particular degree, rather through steady learning and slowly building local reputation.

No one anywhere else would know that he was deservedly called “The Bird-Man of Albany” and even fewer than that would care. He wasn’t old but still was too old to completely rebuild his life from scratch anywhere else and she knew it. Neither of them possessed the emotional fortitude for a long-distance relationship, something he initially denied but could only argue against with half-a-heart in it.

Some of us need to fly free of our cages, she told him, others are defined by their walls and neither approach in this life is right or wrong, we’re all slightly different breeds with very different needs. He understood that after a little while, even if he didn’t want to.

Nonetheless, he was gallant and romantic in his little bookish secret way. Once he realized there was no talking her out of it, he paused for a slow breath then spoke “Well, we had some good times for a little while there, didn’t we?” to which she agreed before he continued:

“No matter what, though, we’ll always have parrots.”

And he was right. No matter when and no matter what, they would always have parrots.