Losing the Sale (Five Sentence Fiction)

This week’s one word prompt from Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction was ‘blush’. 

“I think this room demands ‘blush’” the interior decorator said, pushing a lock of his amber-streaked hair behind his ear, “with perhaps one wall contrasted in ‘eau de nil’.

“I hate pink, and green gives me a headache” Josie said, defiantly challenging this creature who was making her feel inept, unfeminine, and very much out of her depth, “perhaps something more neutral – beige for instance.”

Anton rolled his eyes heavenwards; “But ‘oatmeal’ and ‘calico’ are so passé my dear, one might as well go ‘magnolia’ and shriek ‘antediluvian’ to the entire universe; think of the effect on your child, opening its eyes every morning to such insipidity.”

His gaze flickered disdainfully over her elasticated trousers and wrinkled cheesecloth smock as she drew herself up to her full 5’3”.

“Actually, I’m not pregnant,” she said in steely tones, and his face assumed an engaging shade of terracotta that might, she supposed, go very nicely with the floor tiles with which he was about to become intimately acquainted.