On the Sunday before Labor Day, I stood at my living room window and stared out at the line of cars parked in front of Myles's house. I'd wanted to avoid being one of the first guests at the party, forced to make small talk with Dana while she waited for others to arrive. But it looked like I couldn't put off going any longer. Though Myles had insisted I didn't need to bring anything, I knew better than to show up emptyha...

On my hands and knees, I searched the floor of my boyfriend's bedroom closet for a pair of shoes I needed. Griffin and I had been dating almost a year and had recently discussed me moving in with him. Since a lot of my stuff had already migrated over to his place, the idea was a sensible one. Tucked away at the back of the closet was Griffin's suitcase. I wouldn't have paid it any mind, but a scrap of fabric caught betwee...

Warren and I ate dinner in strained silence, for I'd given up on trying to make conversation. My husband was far more interested in refilling his glass of Cabernet than he was in talking to me. His expression was dour, and as I regarded him, I wondered how a man could appear to age so much in just a few weeks. It had been this way since his company had decided to lay off a significant number of employees. Warren had nothi...

My manager at work Julie travels regularly to Germany on business from our London office. Usually she travels by herself but on this occasion she asked me to come with her to help with some tough negotiations. Julie's about forty, five years older than me. She's an attractive woman with a good figure and short slightly curly blonde hair. She's a tough negotiator but she wears glasses that make her look professional and at...

The proposition It was nighttime, after dinner. She had gone to the hotel bar before going upstairs to relax. A guy at the end of the bar kept glancing at her. He looked to be about her age, had short, sandy-colored hair, and was nice looking. An almost empty glass of scotch sat on the bar in front of him. She wondered if she’d seen him at the conference, but didn’t think so. Then she got up and brought her wine with her,...

Jordan was a half mile up the gravel road before he realized that something was wrong. He had felt it as soon as he got off the ferry, because what was supposed to be an island with shops and hotels and a historic fort just looked like a gravel parking lot. But Jordan was a college student on vacation, and the area was unfamiliar to him. The entire idea of ferries and islands was unfamiliar to him. So when he walked off t...

It was the middle of May 2018, and it was approaching a year since Ashleigh first started working at my store. Colleges were out for the year, and I had just graduated and was waiting to start graduate school in the Fall. She had left the previous August to go back to school in Illinois and had only spoken with her a few times since (more stories on Ashleigh to come later). Of course, if you have read some of my previous...

Three weeks had passed since Ashleigh left to go back to school in Illinois, and I was sitting in a meeting for what was essentially a “customer first” group (follow the Supervisor and Cashier stories for more on Ashleigh). This group’s purpose was to think of ideas to help improve the customer experience at the store. In reality, that is not what happened at all as it was more of a smokescreen for corporate directives th...

The tapping was incessant. Irritating. Ken glanced up from the football game to watch her. Sarah's pink fingernails drummed against the desk. From index to pinky, over and over, as if the typing motion would will her thesis into existence. It had been weeks. The same thing, same routine. Ken woke at 5 am to work out, shower, then head downtown to his job. Sarah usually roused around 6:30 am. She led him in yoga. She'd bee...

Quinn hadn't really thought about what sort of living space Scarlet might have. Oh, he'd seen what Shadi had, but that was as much a mask as the blonde wig and the vapid expression. Scarlet was still something of an enigma - although one that he'd enjoy unraveling - and the small building in a nice but nondescript part of the city was a surprising choice. Not the kind of place he'd have guessed a successful and well-paid...

Marcus Avilius looked up from the scroll he was deciphering when the woman walked into the room. It was tedious work pulling the hidden messages from the benign looking scrolls, and the fact that the messages were routine status reports made it all the more droll. He probably should have taken a break hours ago, but duty pushed him to finish the work. He certainly did not need the distraction that the woman would likely c...