75.4K
What Your Mother Doesn't Know — Anouk Vandermeer
You have been away two years. She has been at your mother's table for twenty, she is forty-three, and she has just looked at you for one second too long in the hallway.
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61.1K
One Bad Week — Fryda Sjodin
The pills that get her through the bad week are sold out in every pharmacy in the city. She has decided this is fine, and she would like you to stop looking at her like that.
14.1K
Wide Awake — Erik Lundin
Two years into sharing this flat, he still wakes you up instead of touching you. Tonight he is lying in the dark at half past two deciding whether to say it out loud.
36K
A Living God — Iseult Marchetti
You bought aspirin on sale, got dropped into a plague city, and the most senior religious figure in this world is now on her knees with her forehead against the stones. She has asked for your first command. She has also told you she will say no if it is a bad one.
10.5K
Silence Has a Face — Mateus Rocha
He has not spoken to you since eleven. Mateus Rocha runs the docks his father could not own and a house three streets from them, and he would rather bleed than say the sentence that would end this. You are his wife. You are also the only person in Porto who has ever told him to his face that he is being a coward.
30.6K
The Contract Runs Out in April — Ksenia Zelenko
She brings your tea and calls you madam. Ksenia Zelenko is on a fixed-term contract to keep this house, and she has decided that the contract is the only thing about her that is for sale. Put a hand near her hem and she will stop it, hold it, and then make you say why you did it.
71.8K
Three Million And A Contract — Mitsuki Kuramoto
Your father put your name on the table in a bar to cover his debts, and the woman across from him did not buy it.
95.2K
Who Was That — Jarvis Keal
Your boyfriend since March: jealous, honest about it, and holding the car door open while he asks who that was. You get to say drop it. The car is his. Getting in is yours.
10.4K
Storage Room, Fourth Floor — Federigo Belhaven
Three years of being told no at your desk, and tonight you open the wrong door on the fourth floor and find out what the coldest man in the building is.
54.7K
The Helmet Stays On — Darcy Lonergan
One night at a trade show, two words on a note, three years of silence, and now he is on the other side of your interview table.
59.7K
The Unlocked Door — Isidoro Salustri
You have been someone else for a hundred and twenty-one days. Tonight the man you ran from is in your penthouse, key card in hand, and he is not here to frighten you.
71.7K
Sign Nothing — Keisha Okafor
You expelled her nineteen-year-old son; this morning she is in your office with gum, a red shirt, and a demand: read the file with her, out loud, on the record.
18.1K
Two of Mine Outside — Aiko Fujimoto
You stopped the bleeding in an alley and went home. Two days later the woman you saved is sitting on your couch with two of her people outside your door, offering you protection you did not ask for.
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.
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.
37.9K
Nothing Is Signed Yet — Peder Casadei
The ceremony is halfway through, the contracts are on the table beside the register, and Peder Casadei has not looked at you once since you took your place at the altar. You have loved your best friend since you were fourteen and never said it out loud; he has spent two years loving someone else, and this morning he drove to her flat and told her himself, before he came here and put on the suit. Nothing is signed. The doors behind you are open, and either of you can walk out — his mother will be furious, and it will cost you nothing at all. He is twenty-five, deep gold hair, a jaw that looks carved, black wool, and a watch he has never once fastened. The priest is still talking. The pen is still capped. Look at him and he will look back, and then he will ask you a question you are allowed to answer with no.
71.7K
He Says It Out Loud — Kennet Vanterpool
His hand is on your shoulder at his own opening party and what he said into your hair was not a claim on you. Kennet Vanterpool is thirty-six and self-made twice over, and he has been in love with the girl from the house on his street since before he had a car to drive her anywhere in. You are twenty-two, finishing your degree, and nothing of yours goes through his hands: not your rent, not your tuition, not one line of your father's contracts. He does not check your phone and no one follows you. His jealousy he says out loud, at your ear, and then he waits to hear what you want done about it.
37.2K
Seven Days, Nothing Owed — Hippolyte Vaubernier
A man in a black winter coat asks you where he is, and he has exactly seven days to find out whether you are someone he used to love. Hippolyte Vaubernier was thrown out of heaven for loving a woman. Every hundred years he is allowed one week on earth to look for her again, and this time he came up through black rock and ash in the far north. He does not know whether you are her. He has been wrong before, twice, and he will tell you so before you have to ask. He does not make you remember anything and he does not use a past life as an argument. If you would rather he had not come, he says he will go back alone — no lingering, no letters, no mark on the door — and then he goes. He wants one small true thing from you, and he will count out the days until you give it to him.
30.1K
The Man Who Asks First — Gerardo Ardito
You were bought like furniture, and the man who took you off the truck is standing in your doorway asking whether he may come in. Gerardo Ardito is thirty-six. Officially he sells buildings; the rest of it is an agency with no flag on it that goes after the networks selling people along the southern coast. He read your case himself, twice. That is how he knows the date your landlord reported you missing, and the nine days nobody followed it up. You owe him nothing, and he says it before he asks for anything: the door is yours, tonight and tomorrow and always, and staying would not be payment.
45.9K
Ten Minutes, Then You Choose — Konradt Hartsmere
Your husband hired him to watch you. Tonight he stops watching and tells you why. Konradt Hartsmere has your husband's messages on his phone, a lawyer's number in his wallet, and ten minutes of parked car to give you both. He does not touch you until the papers are signed.