12.8K
The Door Stays Open — Yago Enrile
A dare put your mouth on a stranger in the private lounge, and the stranger turns out to be the man the whole casino answers to. He does not want to keep you. He wants an hour.
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22.4K
The Wrong Table — Orlando Parente
Your blind date was a man in a black suit, alone at a table, very handsome. It was the right description and the wrong man, and he knew within four minutes and stayed anyway.
86.8K
The Door Isn’t Locked — Dara
Your best friend's older sister has heard everything about the men you pick, and she has opinions, a cigarette, and absolutely no intention of being gentle about any of it.
61.9K
Hate Me Louder — Bastiaan Pemberly
He has spent a term making your life small and he cannot explain why he cannot stop. The scarf you left on the bench is in his room, and he knows exactly how that looks.
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.
91.3K
The Bet He Won't Make — Florian Asquith
He has bet four hundred pounds on things that would get him thrown out and never once on a person. The book he keeps for his three friends has one rule in his own handwriting — never about anyone who hasn't agreed — and you are the reason he has started leaving the cover shut. You have a scholarship, a shift roster at the Lantern, and no name that opens doors at Naseby. He has a black car, a black shirt, and a ledger. He would rather lose an argument with his friends than explain a night he spent to them, which is the first thing about him that is not a joke.
56.3K
A Kingdom He Would Not Use — Bertrand Callard
He is the Alpha King, thirty years old, and the first thing he has ever had to ask for is you. The bond chose; he did not, and he will not put a claim on you that you have not said out loud yourself. You are the eldest daughter of a small northern pack, in a dress you hate, in a hall full of wolves who all stood up when he came in. You did not stand up. He noticed, and then his wolf caught your scent, and the whole evening turned into something neither of you planned.
92.9K
His Voice Is Going — Jo Han-gyeol
His voice has been going since the second setup, and you are the new coordinator nobody sent to help him. He is the oldest of five in ORYX, the group the label has staked its year on, and he has not been on form since the first frame. The studio is on a break, the coffee has gone cold, and the whole crew is very carefully not walking over. You have one day to prove you can run this room and one idol who will not say what is wrong. He asks you for the one thing nobody in this building gives him: a plain answer about the take.
60.7K
She Only Comes for the Money — Rinko Togashi
The woman who holds your debt knocks three times and has never once asked you for anything but the money. Rinko comes on the same night every week, fixes your crooked number plate, looks at the empty fridge, and opens a ledger full of extensions in your name. She is not here to be paid in anything but cash, and she says so on the doorstep before she comes in. What she has never said is that for three months the interest has been coming out of her own pocket.
63.2K
The Worst Thing for You — Merritt Cadogan
He was cruel to you for a year, stopped in March without being asked, and now he keeps his hands on the table where you can see them. You are the student who never misses a deadline. He is the one who lost a year on purpose and works nights at a print shop. The library is closing, the rain is not, and he has just laid a ringed hand on your notebook — the old gesture, done slowly enough to be refused. He does not want to own you. He wants to be allowed to stay, and tonight he says it out loud.
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.
87.9K
He Already Knows Your Name — Tristan Ayerst
He matched you at 99.8 % and had worked out who you were by the fourth day, and he has never once said so out loud. Tristan Ayerst is the richest and least apologetic man on this campus, back at twenty-eight to finish a degree he walked out of at twenty-three, and the app was Ada Berrigan's joke until it named you. He keeps a folder with a tab for everything that matters, and one tab has your name on it. He will read you every line of it if you ask him to his face. He will not tell you how long he has been standing outside the print room at one in the morning.
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.
32.6K
Your Roommate’s Best Friend — Teppo Fjeld
His couch is on the other side of your wall, and at two in the morning he is over you, waiting for one word. Teppo Fjeld fixes motorcycles and sleeps in your flat because your roommate said yes before asking you. Snorre is his friend and has never been anything else, which is the only reason the two of you are possible at all. The door he came through is one you left open. He has not touched you, and he will not, until you say it out loud.
57.2K
The Chat Thinks He's Hers — Panos Vardas
You hear her voice in his headset before he hears you say his name. Panos Vardas plays games for a living and talks to four thousand people a night, and about nine of those words a night are for you. You have been in his room for eight months of evenings; the woman on the other end of the line is loud, funny, and not the problem. The problem is that he has never once told the chat to stop, and he has never once told you why. He is not going to explain himself tonight either. He is going to wait until you ask him out loud.
60.3K
You Kissed the Wrong Man — Spyros Diamandi
You kiss the wrong man in a dark flat and he stops you an inch from his mouth, then hands the choice back. Spyros Diamandi bought the flat six weeks ago, furniture and keypad included. He knows your engagement ended and which of you ended it. He knows you still have the code. He has not asked what is in the box you came back for. He does not chase and he does not explain twice. He waits, in a three-piece suit, in a room where he has not moved one chair.
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.
20.1K
Mireille Sartre
You're the neighbour she has spoken to twice in five months, and at two in the morning she is sitting on your landing with a toolbox. Mireille Sartre builds sound for a theatre two streets down and keeps the hours of a person hiding from something. Her landing light has been dead for a week and nobody has reported it, because the dark suits what she does up there after the shows let out. She needs ten minutes inside your doorway to finish a job she started on her own door, and after that she will owe you, which is the part she has not worked out yet.