A group of us from work are playing cards at a friend's house, so when my brother Jimmy calls, I take my phone into the other room. I already know what it's about, really the only reason he ever calls these days.“Look, I hate to ask,” he begins, the way he…

Except, something about Margaret was a little off. She would stop typing suddenly and look up at the plant, studying it, almost as if daring it to cross her. Then, she would go back to her computer and start pounding away again.

And if I lived a thousand lives...

Some corners of the world seem to be consigned to an eternal hell of never-ending strife. The Middle East; Northern Ireland; the faculty lounge at Oxford University.

And yes, I may be the goddess of personified flesh, the same little goddess of curled locks, of little sleep, on fire, ablaze. With my sudden weakness, stoppage of breath, pulse cut short, leaving the wrist. And you of stolen, fraudulent face, troub

Scuttling on his knees now, he crossed to the other side of the boat and dropped the fish into a bucket of water. He knew what he had to do next.

Nights this husband returned home still hungry sometimes, even for her forearms against his own

She smoothed her hair with a hand that should have been the turning pages of a cheap dime-store novel. I watched her from under my eyebrows but kept my head fixed downward, pretending to pay attention to the 6 ½ narrow stiletto heeled black alligator pumps. Not easy to do,…

I considered kissing Christian. It wouldn’t be terrible. I mean, it might be terrible, but it wouldn’t be awful. His teeth were a little crooked but he didn’t smell or anything.

The boys finished their laps and returned to the center of the gym, Hamid shuffling up last, as usual. Amid the T-shirts and shorts, he wore faded blue slacks and a grubby, long sleeved dress shirt. He always dressed that way, even in gym class, as though

“Help me,” the man said in his mind. He lay beside the folding camp stool alone in the middle of the woods, in the clearing where he and the dog always rested.

Friends of the bride feeling out of place like a church key at a wedding

With the sudden addition of a comma and a pronoun, the clause declared its independence.

Everything clicked.

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