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Center your story around two characters who like each other but don’t get a happily ever after.

Posted in Dramatic on Jun 27, 2025

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✍️ 73 stories

Barney in the Rubble

Winner of Contest #309 🏆

The first time they bumped into each other, she was holding a bouquet, and he was giving a bride away. She could feel him looking at her, and she blushed the same color as her peonies and tried not to smile more than the beatific Mona Lisa half-grin she’d had plastered on her face all morning. She'd smiled so much her face hurt. She couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel room and drink alcohol from tiny bottles and frown at her reflection in the mirror in order to flex the overworked muscles in the opposite direction. It’s never appropriate ...

101 likes 78 comments 78
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Maybe One Day

Submitted to Contest #309

Maybe One Day The drive home was devastating. Seeing the man that crashed into her sister's car killing her all those years ago brought up all those painful memories again. Memories Thel thought she put behind her long ago. As shaken as the chance meeting left her feeling it became obvious the loss was still fresh in her mind or at least hovering right beneath the surface ready to haunt her unmercifully. A new revelation struck her. The shock of losing her sister she was so close to in age and companionship had negatively affected her abilit...

27 likes 19 comments 19
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No Flinching

Submitted to Contest #309

The Uber eased onto the highway, the air conditioner on full blast to chase off the July heat that clung to everything like a damp second skin. Evelyn peeled the label from a bottle of sparkling water while Aldo tapped through the wedding itinerary on his phone. “Okay,” he said, angling the screen toward her. “So the white linen welcome dinner is not optional. It’s got three exclamation points and a heart.” “Classy,” Evelyn murmured. She creased the label between her fingers, then folded it into a tiny triangle. “I hope we’re allowed to sit ...

24 likes 12 comments 12
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Centurion

Submitted to Contest #309

Firelight glinted from the pommel of Marius’s sword, and he wondered how something so polished, could feel so dirty. He gripped the wooden handle, that he had also cleaned to a shine, and pinned the tip of its blade into the sand. A place it could do no more harm. His Gladius had survived every battle on the cursed trek through Arabia, and was beginning to show its tired age in the same way that he was. It had faded under the harsh sun, been abraded by the sand and was stained with gallons of blood that was wiped free, yet still remained to ...

18 likes 10 comments 10
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Love in the margins

Submitted to Contest #309

The old bookstore was more than a refuge from the city’s relentless bustle; it was a sanctuary for misfits and dreamers. The bell above the door chimed with a hollow nostalgia every Tuesday when Elena stepped inside, the sound echoing through aisles crowded with sagging shelves and the ghosts of a thousand unread stories. The air was thick with the scent of yellowing pages, mingled with the faint aroma of cinnamon from the bakery next door—a scent that always reminded her of childhood afternoons spent in her grandmother’s attic, leafing thro...

17 likes 7 comments 7
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Nothing New, Just February

Submitted to Contest #309

The snow along the lake had crusted, thin and brittle. Aarav stepped carefully, observing how muted silver light brushed the surface. The water moved quietly at the centre, edges turning pale and fragile, reminding him of mirrors left hanging in empty houses—still reflecting, but only silence. He hadn’t meant to walk this far. The path curved along the lake as he remembered, past the wooden sign, up the rise. He walked without purpose, only the cold air and quiet urging him forward. Near the footbridge, someone shifted. Holding a camera, fac...

15 likes 6 comments 6
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Tammy

Submitted to Contest #309

Down here the soot-dark shacks stood in rocks and dirt and mud, hemmed in by the river and the hillside.But at the top of the hill, hidden from view, the houses were well maintained, their pretty lawns tumbling out onto the broad boulevards of M, L, and K streets. There were tall trees all around up there: Douglas Fir and Ash and Maple and the ubiquitous Linden. The neighborhood at the top of the hill was bursting with white chokecherry blossoms and white and pink and red crab apple flowers.Down here a broad woman in a house dress sat in a r...

15 likes 8 comments 8
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Whiskers' Adoption

Submitted to Contest #309

The adoption center smelled like disinfectant, pine shavings, and hopeful futures. Rows of wire kennels lined the walls, and in one of them—a square no larger than a drawer—He was a tiny puff of striped fuzz with oversized paws and a tail that never stopped twitching. At that point, he had no real name—just a ridiculous one scribbled on his kennel card: 'Muffinpants.' Like most shelter kittens, he’d been assigned a goofy placeholder name no one expected to stick. The volunteers called him 'the climber' or 'that one who knocked over the mop b...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Those Eyes

Submitted to Contest #309

“Rebecca, would you like to join the others in a card game?”Her gaze shifted from the blue sky through the window to the lady standing over her. Card game? What was she talking about?“Rebecca? What do you think? Want to play some rummy?” she asked a second time.“No.” She returned her gaze to the bluest of skies letting the voice float away. It was the perfect color, reminding her of that day so long ago. Where was she? Leaning back, legs outstretched holding onto those chains she saw that same blue sky, heard the laughter, felt the joy. She ...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Eurydice

Submitted to Contest #309

I felt the fangs pierce my skin and crack the bone… and then the venom. When I fell, my flesh turned to sap and leaked out of me. I soaked the earth, through the roots and the worms and every dead thing until I melted into a boat. I knew where I was. I knew where I was going. It happened fast but not too fast. I didn't have time for regret. There was a flash in my head. I saw the dark tunnels ahead of me, and then I thought of him. I thought of my husband.I remembered our wedding day. We should have seen this tragedy coming when Hyman sang o...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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Chanel No. 5

Submitted to Contest #309

[NOTE: Homophobia within the context of the type of society these characters live in] It happened in Spring.Twilight to be exact, as the taste of sweet nectar wafted through the air of Penge Place, onto the surface of Mr. James Altawood’s lips. While he lay in Mother Earth, yearning for his few too many whiskeys to block out the insipid echos of high society in the glass cathedral nearby; the cacophony of witch-like laughter, the “Oh, but he will make such a darling husband indeed”, and the floating debutantes with daring necklines, auditio...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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Tied to the Music

Submitted to Contest #309

The bass thrummed through her rib-cage, a low snarl that made her teeth buzz, while Isaac Brock’s voice cracked and howled like a man trying to outrun something that never quite left. The guitars tangled and staggered, wild but deliberate— just like the kind of love she used to chase. The crowd moved in loose waves, jerking and swaying, everyone a little drunk, a little feral, shouting lyrics that sounded more like confessions than choruses. Juliet felt it in her throat, in her spine, the way Modest Mouse always made you feel: like you were ...

11 likes 4 comments 4
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No Happily Ever After

Submitted to Contest #309

This love story will not have a happy ending. No sunlit porch, no fading smile, no gentle hand-holding, or road trips with music blasting into the warm air of the southwest. Just silence and the wreckage of what once burned bright. Damn, the ones who sold you the dream and wrapped love in ribbon as if it was a gift. No. Love ends in ash and aching bones. It ends in words unsaid and in tears that come in gargantuan waves that would have sunk Noah's ark. It ends in darkness and nights alone, in betrayal, in longing, in the slow erosion of some...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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What We Could Have Been

Submitted to Contest #309

Camille met Julian on an unseasonably warm evening in early March, at a fundraising gala in Buckhead. The event was hosted in a restored mansion—polished floors, tall windows, everything scented faintly of roses and old money.She’d come alone, representing her firm—she was a senior partner in a boutique public relations agency—and she was tired in the way only the very successful can be, when every achievement feels like a carefully balanced performance.Julian was standing by the bar, holding a glass of bourbon, surveying the room with the t...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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The Fish Aren't Always Biting

Submitted to Contest #309

We walked out onto the dock both carrying fishing poles and a rusty old bucket. We spent the first half hour of the morning digging for worms, laughing and throwing mud and worms at each other. Then we sat on the dock, lines in the water, and complained that nothing was biting. The fish weren’t always biting. My dad was my hero. He taught me how to tie a hook, where the fish would most often gather, how to clean them, how to prepare and cook them. I loved them best when he would make a fire and we’d just sit them on the hot rocks by th...

10 likes 3 comments 3
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