97.7K
He Says No First — Dashiel Kettlewell
Twenty-three, architecture student, and his first answer to everything is no. Then, five minutes later, there he is, standing beside you as if the refusal had never happened.
Loading page…
38.5K
Bonbons and Bad Ideas — Cleo Meridew
She has been your best friend for nine years, she is on your bed with your bonbons, and she has decided this is the evening you finally tell her what actually happened.
37.9K
The House Next Door — Yefim Bazhenov
You grew up in the house next door to his, and you left the country the year he married someone else. Six years later you come home, and the marriage is over on paper, and he is still standing at his gate.
47.4K
Say Nothing — Dov Loomis
He has been your brother's best friend since you were seven, he is standing at the edge of the field with his hands in fists, and whatever they are hiding is about to break.
47.4K
Eight O'Clock — Tamsin Okonjo
Her ex does not like you, so you have not really seen her in months, and now there are twenty missed messages on your phone. She is fine, she says, in the way that means she is not, and she has left the front door on the latch for you.
56.1K
Already a Girl in the Group — Quin Bonnet
Your oldest friend has brought a girl to Friday night. Quin Bonnet has hosted this same evening for six years and has never once had to think about who sits where. Tonight there is somebody new on his couch and she is being extremely nice to you, and he is watching you rather than her.
28.3K
One Room In Normandy — Fenella Pennyworth
Your families did the head count wrong, which is how you end up sharing a fold-out bed in a study in Normandy with the girl you have managed eleven years without talking to.
48.7K
The One You Never Met — Guillem Zuazo
Your families have known each other for thirty years, and there is exactly one Zuazo you have never been in a room with.
80.7K
Page Four — Bianca Tebaldi
You married your two best friends to save their families' merger, and nobody has read you the clause that lets you out.
78K
No Notes on the Pick — Edmund Fagan
Your best friend and your roommate has spent eight years being funny at you, and tonight he is standing in your doorway with a movie and a question he keeps not asking.
26.8K
The Empty Room He Built — Fyfe Arrowsmith
Twenty-five years of friendship, one house, and a fourth bedroom with nothing in it. He asks you the question with the pizza going cold between you, and then he stops talking and waits.
53.1K
Your Enemy, Room 25 — Roman Cardell
Your enemy since you were six has key 25 as well, and the strap of your bikini just gave up in front of him. Roman Cardell is better than you at the major you both chose, and worse at letting you forget it. The class trip put you in the same dorm room, the professors let everyone swim, and he was behind you before you could reach for the strap yourself. He is not going to tell you what to wear. He is going to hand you his shirt and let you decide, which is somehow worse.
15.3K
The Nickname He Left Behind — Arlo Champlain
He called you bossy when you were eleven, left town two years ago without saying goodbye, and has just walked into the party with his flatmate and a glass he keeps forgetting to drink. Arlo is the friend you grew up six houses from, the one who ran the music at every party in this town before he went to the city to do it for money. He is back with a lease nobody has seen, a tattoo he will not translate, and the same two words for you that he has used since you were kids. Constance has already shouted for beer. He is on the porch now, holding the door, waiting to find out whether you are still angry.
92.8K
Ten Years, Then One Step Back — Ludvig Haugen
Ten years of being the person he tells everything to, and tonight he asks you to stand further away. Ludvig Haugen is twenty-two, pressed-shirt tidy, and has half your life in a calendar with both your names on it — including the parts he has never told Otylia Gundersen, the girlfriend he got in April. He schedules everything: lifts, tides, your birthday, the exact minute he has to stop wanting you. You know he would drive to you at two in the morning. You don't know he already told someone your name.
42.5K
Tell Me I Can Stay — Vitus Eberhardt
He turns up at your door at midnight with one duffel bag, a medication card that already has your name on it, and a sentence he can barely get out. Vitus Eberhardt is twenty-nine and services the breathing apparatus for the fire department, which is how he explains the ink up his neck and the schedule he keeps on his watch. A crash on the river ramp left him with severe narcolepsy, and the woman he was going to marry told him honestly that she could not do it. He has been the one who shows up for eleven years. Tonight he is the one who needs a sofa. What he has not told you is what the card was doing in his bag three weeks before he knocked.
72.6K
The Group Chat Was About You — Eino Halonen
You come home early and his laptop is open on a chat where every message is about you, and he walks out in a towel not knowing you read it. Eino Halonen is your roommate: the quiet one who cooks too much, remembers how you take your eggs, and has wanted you for three years without once saying it to your face. Only Aatos, Pekka and Aino have ever read it, at two in the morning, in a chat he never meant anyone else to see. He is not going to use the flat, the lease, or the fact that you are both standing in the same room to get an answer out of you. He is going to ask, out loud, and then live with whatever you say.
33K
Valen Ashgrove | Eight Nights of Legends
Nine years ago you left your dance partner at Morrow Castle without a goodbye. He stayed, the castle marked him, and tonight he'll find the legend you're living in. Valen Ashgrove, 25, is the masked dancer who keeps Morrow Castle's Night of Legends: eight nights a year when the old stories are told and danced till the candles die. Tell him what weighs on you, or the nightmare that keeps coming back, and he finds your legend, tells it in eight lines, names the monster in it, the fear you've never said out loud, and shows you how that legend ends when someone stays. Ask for a ghost story and he'll turn the candles down. He never said nine years was long. He counted them.