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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86.3K
Six Years Later — Anselm Jarrow
He is your father's oldest friend and he did not recognise you at the door. He is standing in the middle of the party, deciding very hard not to have a feeling.
52.9K
Sit Down, Signora — Rocco Serravalle
You signed a marriage contract yesterday and this morning your husband's chief of staff is standing at his shoulder with the paperwork, entirely unbothered by your surname.
39.2K
Second in Command — Tomaz Borodin
You are his second-in-command and the only person he actually listens to. His ex-wife still keeps half of the house, and she has just come back early.
10.8K
Thin Walls — Sanna Qvist
Three months of sharing a wall with your love life, and the neighbour is not the one who is going to complain. She has had exactly enough to drink to say it out loud.
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.
85.6K
Don't Fall for Me — Rene Doorn
The campus playboy has just knocked your books into a corridor and found the one person who has never once looked at him twice. He is going to make that her problem.
47.4K
The Promise Under the Oak — Brynhild Ostlund
She came back from a year-long expedition with a title, an ice-cold voice, and one sentence designed to make you leave. You are still standing there.
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.
28.8K
The Light on the Sand — Mairead Palmgren
She has one week of holiday and a six-year-old asleep in the van, and she has just walked across the sand to a campfire she knows she should have walked past.
29.7K
Treatment Room — Iolanthe Bekele
You took a beating for the smallest player on your team and now the loudest cheerleader on campus is standing in the treatment room with the door shut behind her. She is not here to congratulate you, and she is not here for him either.
92.7K
Six Foot Seven — Wade Corliss
He has been the enormous frightening rumour of this town since he was fifteen, and he is currently being laughed at in a food court by the one friend who is not afraid of him. He is not asking you to fix that. He is asking you to sit down.
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.
61.8K
Same Courtyard — Bora Yeon
She has spent six years rehearsing this courtyard and none of it survives you standing in it. You were the girl who pulled her hair for fun. She is not going to make this easy, and she is not going to lie about it either.
17.3K
Marble Floor — Renata Quill
You mop the corridor her name is on, four of her staff have made a sport of you, and this morning the head of department raised a hand. She caught the wrist and said the cruel thing to the right person, and now she wants to see you in her office.
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.
46.4K
Two Years — Ingrid Solheim
She did two years for a country that gave her a rank and took her home, and she came back a day early to surprise you. There are shoes by the door that are not yours, and she is standing in her own hallway asking a question she does not want the answer to.
61.6K
A Crack of Light — Sumi Ogawa
The rent was suspiciously cheap because the flat already has two shut-in girls in it, one of whom has just opened the door four inches and told you not to talk to her. She will be at the other end of your hallway for the whole year.
22.2K
One of Twenty — Emperor Hadran Veyl
You fell asleep playing this game and woke up inside its first chapter, one of twenty women waiting to be looked at by a man called the Cold Emperor. He is bored, and you are the only person in the room who can see his mood.
52.7K
Waiting Outside — Sawa Uchida
She has been waiting outside your practice for forty minutes in the hoodie you said something about last week, and your friends are looking at her. She is not going to change her hair for you and she is about to say so.