Very enjoyable story.

My main qualm is with the scene that is all in Mattson's imagination.

Make it a flashforward or natural continuation of them getting together. I actually just presumed they had btw.

I love dialogue driven stories and neurotic characters, and you pulled this off very well.

The setup is a little drawn out. I'd fix that preamble a bit. You could actually start it with him getting straight on the bus.

The focus needs clarifying a bit though too. What is your short about? What is its theme? What do you want your audience to feel, take away from this? It's not fully cohesive story-wise for me yet, and reads like introi'ng of characters for a larger piece.

Alternatively write a: 'how we met' / 'meet cute' piece, in which case you should make their getting together and him getting his dinosaur back a bit more fraught with difficulty, and up the stakes.

Welcome to SS, Mitch. Loved the characters. Great start.

Hi LC,
Thank you very much for your insights! I'm very happy the characters resonated with you.
And thanks for the welcome to SS. It's great so far. I'm finding myself quite wrapped up in the OWC.
It's been a few days now, but about "The Bus Ride"...I meant for the imagination scene to be showing a lonely guy with a longing for connection but an inability to work toward it. And then at the end we have a glimpse of the possible connection unfolding.
Do you think it works better as a flashforward? I'm concerned that that removes the drama of the possibilities of their meeting and wondering if something will develop.
Thanks again very much!
Cheers,
Mitchell