Ya wanna know somethin’? It’s fun when the prompt came from my own story. And I truly try not to cheat and just keep that scene going because…reasons! Like, the prompt might be at the beginning or the middle and with only 250 words to work with, why duplicate? And the #ThursdayThreads prompt of **She recognized the man.** fit so perfectly in a scene that I’d made notes on but hadn’t written. Today’s snippet involves Kathleen Sullivan, the widow of a wrong cop. I can tell you who the man is–Devlin O’Reilly. That’s not a secret or a spoiler.
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So this was Clancy’s. The legendary pub. As Catholic school girls, they’d dreamed of coming here to meet the sexy—because they were off-limits—Southie boys. Southie boys were bad news. Hoodlums. Thugs. Criminals. Definitely forbidden fruit to proper young ladies. Kathleen glanced around the pub. Those Southie boys had grown into Southie men. Still sexy. Still bad news. Even happily-married Mary Pat was getting an eyeful. Kathleen sighed inwardly. She didn’t want to be here, especially with Nora and Rosie, both of whom had affairs with her husband before his mysterious demise.

Their waitress dropped off their drinks. Resigned to this ill-fated outing, she lifted her pint to her lips. Her hand froze midway when her gaze caught on a pair of warm brown eyes.

The man sat in a booth near the back. Dark hair. Chiseled jawline. Broad shoulders beneath the black T-shirt. She blinked, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. She recognized the man. It was him! The man from the cemetery. The man who’d watched her after Tommy was put in the ground. Maybe not so ill-fated after all, she thought.

Fingers snapped in front of her face. “Kathleen, what the frick, girl?” Mary Pat snapped her fingers again. “You’ve gone pale as a sheet. Didja see a ghost or something?”

She shifted so she could see beyond Mary Pat. The man was gone. Had he ever been there? He was the ghost who haunted her dreams. She fought sudden moisture in her eyes and focused on Mary Pat. “Or something.”
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This snippet has grown into a full complete scene of around 1000 words, which is a looong teaser to be sharing here. Anyway, it’s fun when I get to take one of my phrases and twist it into a new scene with new characters. Writers, take the words and run with them–if you so desire. 😉 Readers, if you were out somewhere, would you recognize a famous person if they walked by?