Heart-Shaped Bruises

Coming soon... a short story by Luke McIntyre

That picture has a story itself. My friend Lake and I hit each other quite a bit. She's fiesty. One night we, somehow, set upon punching each other in the shoulder for a good 15 minutes. I'd hit, she'd hit, rinse, repeat. It's childish, but we'd be kidding ourselves to act like anything but.

Her arm bruised up pretty bad. Mine did a bit, but nothing like hers. Chick can take a punch. A few days afterwards she was examining her arm and noticed, "This bruise kind of looks like a heart."

My jaw dropped.

Literally two days before then I named a short story I've been writing for a while. "Heart-Shaped Bruises." Her bruise did indeed look like a heart, and I had to get a picture of it. If you knew what the story was about, the coincidence would be even more striking.