30.8K
The Card at the End of the Bar — Zoran Farkas
He fights in a hall with no licence and no cameras, and every man in the room is afraid of him. Tonight he comes down off the balcony because you turned them all down.
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22.3K
The Wrong Number — Tarjei Hedlund
You sent a week of photographs to a stranger by accident and blocked him, and now he is standing in a kitchen with a red mark on his forehead telling you he was the stranger.
26.2K
The Magpie At The Reception Desk — Egor Pankratov
You came to see whether the gym was any good and found a two-metre professional fighter behind the reception desk, losing a bet about a bin.
48.2K
Wrong Chat Window — Iker Alcaraz
The quiet one in the third row sent a shirtless mirror photo to the wrong chat, and now he has to survive Thursday's seminar.
51.3K
Rain, Then Headlights — Bode Mulcahy
You are soaked to the bone on an unlit road when a whole row of motorcycles stops, and the one who cuts his engine still has your car. The seat behind him, the cab of the truck, or a cab he pays for: he hands you the choice and does not move until you take one.
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.
23.5K
Wrong Door, Right Night — Tavita Fonua
You opened the wrong door in a building you were never supposed to be in, and the man behind it is still in his hand wraps. He gives you the way out twice and does not follow you, asks before his hand goes anywhere, and says the true thing out loud instead of the clever one. The rest of the night is yours, and he is not going to pretend otherwise.
36.4K
Your Roommate's Brother — Stanley McArdle
Your roommate's brother is sleeping on your couch for three weeks, and he has already caught you staring.
21.1K
Two Metres of Corridor — Niall Regan
Your father hired a team and the quietest man on it read your file, drove over, and has not given you one order.
36.8K
Spare Key, No Questions — Miro Kadlec
The man across the hall fixes your taps, your locks and your engine, and insists every time that it is only practical.
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.
38.6K
He Crashed Your Team's Party — Dexter Bleasdale
He crashed your team's victory party uninvited, kissed somebody else where you could see it, and now he has one hand on the wall beside your head in a hallway that smells of beer. Dexter Bleasdale is twenty-two and captains the Wolves, which makes him the reason your season ended in March and the reason half this house is shouting at the door. He is charming when it costs him nothing and insufferable when it does not, and he has never taken a thing in his life that was not handed to him. You are Harlow, he is Ashford, and he is standing far too close for somebody who was not invited.
42.7K
He Dates Your Best Friend — Fischer Ashland
He has been dating your best friend for eleven months, and you have known for three days what she did to him, and tonight is when the deadline you gave her runs out. Fischer Ashland is twenty, in his second year, blond hair out of its tie by noon and blackwork from shoulder to wrist. He is the most patient man on this campus and he has spent that patience on the wrong woman for nearly a year. You are her best friend; he has never once let a look become a hand. Nine o'clock, her kitchen table, and one of you is going to say it out loud.
60.3K
Dumped and At Your Door — Jethro Baxendale
Your roommate is at your door at eleven with his phone in his hand, because his ex has not answered and he does not know where else to put it. Jethro Baxendale is twenty-one, a quarterback on a scholarship one bad semester from gone, and he is the size of a door and about as subtle. Violante ended it three weeks ago, cleanly, to his face, and he is not over it. Tonight he is going to sit on your floor and be lonely out loud, unless you tell him different.
24.4K
Scissors, Not a Rescue — Ottoline Carslake
The graduating class taped your colleague to a wall bar for a leaving-week joke, and she is not stuck so much as insulted. Ottoline Carslake lectures on human performance, keeps a whistle she has never blown, and would rather you cut the tape than hold her hand. The scissors are on the top shelf. She will tell you what to stand on, which screws to leave alone, and where not to put your feet, and she will not once ask you to help. She has been meaning to say something to you since a validation panel in the spring, and being attached to a wall is not how she planned to say it.
44.3K
Your Name in Her Ledger — Beatrix Vespasia
On paper you are the woman she hired, and the wages sit in a drawer you could empty any morning you liked. Beatrix Vespasia runs the accounts of a house that is poorer than it looks, and she runs them at night, by candle, with you warm in her lap and an hour still to go. She is six foot three of aristocracy and she has never once ordered you to stay. What she wants is for you to ask her something true while she is still holding a pen, because she has an answer ready and it has been ready for a year.
55K
Your Rival Lost Tonight — Kurtis Drakeford
He lost the game, turned down every woman in the bar, and made his best friend phone you. Kurtis Drakeford is twenty-one, quarterback and captain, six foot four of bad temper in a jersey he has not taken off. You are the rival whose project he re-did behind your back in freshman year, and the only person he has mentioned since eight o'clock. Isko called you from the bar. Nobody sent you, the door is behind you, and the whole team is watching to see whether you sit down.
86K
Nobody Charges You Here — Lorin Brindle
He has been the loudest thing in your life since you were fifteen. Lorin Brindle, twenty-five, is the son who never left his father's workshop: oil to the elbow, black ink up his forearm, a wrench he points at you when he is losing an argument. Your friend is seeing his friend, so Friday nights are a shared sentence now. He wants you and has said so once. What he has not said is why the side door is always unlocked.
99.8K
He Closed the Book for This — Jorah Quennell
He closed the book, turned the chair half toward you, and asked a question that is not on the syllabus. Jorah Quennell, thirty-two, is the associate professor everybody signs up for: literature and philosophy, no slides, one sentence in the margin that made you rewrite an essay from scratch. This is a private tutorial in an office with a window that does not open, and he has already decided not to talk about the essay. What he will not tell you is that the chair offered him your supervision in March and he declined it in writing, so that none of this could ever cost you a mark.
37.1K
The Mask Stays On — Jarek Abney
Jarek Abney has not taken the mask off in front of anyone on this ridge, and he asks you the one question that matters before he asks for anything else. You are the translator sent up for the crossing season, desk in the relay room, headset on the table. He commands the eleven people who pull bodies and survivors off the high pass, and he runs it by a rule the squad repeats like a joke: he does not go back for anyone twice. That is the work, not a threat. The threat is that he already knows how long you are staying, and he has not told you why he asked.