Melodramatic Short Stories & Mistress Cheating Novels

After she was intimate with her husband, Derrick Gladwin, Celine Clarkson headed to the bathroom to clean up. Then the closet door swung open. Jenny Dlay—Celine's best friend—popped out, laughing like crazy. "Wow, Cece. You act all innocent, but you still make that face when things get good? I'm dead." Jenny rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, mocking the way Celine had bitten her lip and trembled. Celine went pale and froze. Jenny didn't care. She strutted over, went up on her toes, and hooked an arm around Derrick's neck, her nails brushing through his Adam's apple. "Okay, Ricky. Didn't know you had that in you. You seriously wore her out." She smirked. "Almost feel bad for her." Derrick laughed and flicked her forehead. "Told you. You just didn't believe me." "Can you blame me? I thought you were all talk." Jenny grinned and tugged at his robe. "Guess I'll have to check for myself..."

Before the Christmas holidays, the four of us besties from Kingsley City held a vote. We had one question on the table: should Mia Williams be allowed to join our tight-knit friend group? I thought my friends and my boyfriend would vote no, just like me. After all, Mia had ulterior motives. She had repeatedly mocked and provoked me, all while shamelessly flirting with my boyfriend. However, I could not have been more wrong. My childhood friend, Jason Miller, remained calm as he said, “I vote yes. Mia is great in every way. Jenna, your jealousy is getting out of hand.” My best friend, Lily Wilson, immediately backed him up. “Exactly! Jenna, you can’t be so selfish. You don’t get to decide who we’re allowed to be friends with.” I clenched my fists and turned to my boyfriend, Evan Taylor. He had already sent Mia an invitation to join our group chat. “Jenna, what’s one more person? Her joining isn't going to hurt you. Don’t be so difficult, okay?” That was when it hit me. The love and friendship I had always been so proud of had both betrayed me when it mattered most.

Lawrence Yancey gave me a supplementary card with a spending limit of 300 dollars, and any excess required his approval with a receipt. He said this was to ensure transparency in the management of the family's finances. I did as he asked for three years. At last month's medical checkup, I was diagnosed with thyroid nodules, and the doctor recommended that I undergo a needle biopsy. I took a picture of the bill and sent it to him. “7,200 dollars?!” He replied in an instant. “It’s just a nodule. Can’t you just monitor the situation first?” I didn’t reply to his text and canceled the appointment. That night, when he got home, he flung two shopping bags onto the floor by the foyer. I recognized that logo. I opened one of the bags and pulled out a necklace worth 8,600 dollars. A greeting card lay at the bottom of the bag with a message in his handwriting. “Happy birthday, Wendy. You deserve the best.” Wendy was his new colleague in the Planning Department. At last month’s department gathering, she had even asked me with a smile, “Mrs. Yancey, is Lawrence extremely generous to you?” I put the greeting card back where I found it. My mom ended up accompanying me to the test for the nodule, which turned out to be benign. The day my report was out, I didn’t tell him the results. I told the court instead. When he received the court summons, he asked, “Can’t we talk things through?” I finally learned how to use the phrase he taught me: “Send in an application and wait for my approval.”

I once believed meeting Charles was the final ray of comfort in my life. A sightless man and a terminally ill woman, leaning on each other to find warmth in the dark. I gave up chemotherapy, pushing through cancer pain to work, all just to leave behind every cent I had for my "blind" boyfriend and our unborn baby. I even signed an organ donor form, hoping that after my death, my eyes could finally bring him light. That belief shattered when I saw a photo in the hospital director's office. There he was, surfing under the bright sun. His eyes shone, with an arm wrapped around an heiress dripping in multi-million-dollar jewels. It turns out our whole love story was nothing more than a rich kid's bet, and my devotion was nothing more than entertainment for his wealthy friends. He trampled my father's hard-earned savings into the dirt and burned my late mother's legacy on a single night of fireworks just to make another woman smile. So, I shredded the donor agreement and lay on the operating table for an abortion with a smile. Since they wanted a game, I’d play along with them until the end.

For ten years, I stood beside Adrian Shaw while he clawed his way up from nothing to a nine-figure fortune. In all that time, he never once took me anywhere that cost more than twenty dollars a head. On the eve of our tenth anniversary, I sent him a link to the steakhouse I'd been saving for years. His expression darkened. "Just because we have money now doesn't mean we can forget how hard life can get. Thrift is a virtue, Nora. Don't lose it." I thought he had a point, so I nodded and agreed to cancel the reservation. Then, on the day I went to the restaurant to cancel it, I saw Adrian across the dining room, having dinner with a girl. He cut her steak for her, then reached over and gently wiped a streak of sauce from the corner of her mouth. I knew her. Chloe Foster, the company's newest intern. Twenty-one years old. "Mr. Shaw, I can't finish all this," Chloe said. "What a waste." "If it made you happy, it wasn't wasted." Adrian gazed at her with open tenderness. "We can box up the rest for Nora." "But those are my leftovers." He chuckled. "It's fine. Nora was with me when we had nothing. She isn't picky." Chloe smiled at that. "So she got the hard years, and I get the good ones?" Adrian said nothing for a long moment. Then he murmured, "Yes." I tightened my grip on the reservation slip, my nails digging into my palm, and I didn't feel a thing. The hostess beside me lowered her voice. "Ms. Wells, tables are in high demand right now. Are you sure you want to cancel?" I swallowed the bitterness burning in my throat. "No," I said. "Keep the table—and bring me the most expensive meal you serve.”

After our engagement, the six of us friends agreed to take one last trip together before the wedding. That night, my friend Anders Greer suggested we play a "24-Hour Couple Swap." Anyone who drew matching symbols had to act like a couple for the next twenty-four hours. Whoever drew a blank card could only take pictures and carry everyone's bags. In the first round, I drew a blank. My fiancee, Brielle Rice, and Anders both drew moons. They held hands while watching the sunrise, while I followed behind carrying three people's bags. In the second round, I drew another blank. They both drew roses. Their penalty was to hug for one minute. Everyone crowded around, cheering them on, while I stood off to the side and kept time. The third round. The fourth... Seven times in a row. Every single time, I was the odd one out. On the final night, they drew matching wedding-dress cards. According to the rules, the two of them had to hold a mock wedding. Anders snatched my engagement ring and slipped it onto her ring finger. All our friends gathered around them, shouting, "Kiss him!" The next second, Brielle actually lifted her face and kissed him. While everyone was celebrating, I opened the boxes that held the cards. Every card in my box was blank. However, Brielle's and Anders's boxes were stuffed with matching moons, roses, and wedding dresses. I smiled and deleted all the digital wedding invitations I'd already prepared. If there had never been room for me on a trip meant for six people, then there was no reason to save a place for any of them for the rest of my life.

My fiancé, Everett Prescott, spent five whole years designing my wedding dress, and it finally arrived today. Except I couldn't zip it up. It stayed wide open until my best friend, Sienna Hart, slipped into the dress perfectly. The fabric hugged her curves like a second skin. She turned to my fiancé with an exasperated sigh. "Everett, are you serious? You got Leah’s size wrong. Again." My blood ran cold. Over the five years Everett and I had been together, this wasn't the first time he'd conveniently forgotten my measurements. When he bought me pajamas that were a size too small, he just blinked, flashing that easy grin of his. "Oh, wait. I think this is Sienna's size, right? Let's just give it to her. I'll buy you another set." When my engagement ring turned out to be too small, he scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. "My bad. Well, we already bought it, so we might as well give it to Sienna. Lucky her." Our wedding was in two days, and once again, he got the measurements dead wrong. Everett rubbed his nose, giving a weak laugh. "Totally my fault, babe. My bad. I'll just take it back to the shop and get it altered." "Everett, altering a custom wedding dress takes at least six months," I said, my voice barely a whisper. He offered a helpless smile. "Well, you can't exactly walk down the aisle without a dress, right? Don't worry about it. As soon as the dress is altered, we'll have the wedding immediately. We've already waited five years. What's another six months?" Right then, my phone buzzed in my palm. [Sweetheart, the guy you have an arranged marriage with is flying back into the country in two days. I don't care what excuse you have this time. You’re coming home and marrying him!] I stared at the screen for a long time before replying: [Got it. I'll be there.] I spent five long years waiting around for this wedding. I'm not waiting another six months.

On my wife Christine Stott's birthday, I held a property certificate, hoping to surprise her. I waited until midnight, but she never showed up. Instead, I got a confession. Christine: [I'm pregnant, but the baby isn't yours. I'm sorry...] I stared at those words, reading them over and over. I worked hard for three years to buy this property. I worked overtime until I was vomiting blood, I drank myself into the hospital at business dinners, and I came home every night so exhausted that I would collapse straight into bed. And her? She wiped away all my efforts just by saying the baby was not mine. I called her. She answered quickly. "I'm sorry for what I did to you. I'll give you whatever you want." I took a deep breath and asked, "Anything I want?" "Yes." "Then let's get a divorce. You leave with nothing."

We had been in love for five years and married for three. My husband had taken the whole “going Dutch” to an absurd extreme. A two-dollar bottle of water for the house? Split it in half. A $105 utility bill? He'd send me a Venmo request for my half. He called it “the spirit of equality in a modern marriage.” According to him, rules were rules. I gritted my teeth and put up with it. Until I found out I was pregnant. To save money on the prenatal appointments and nutritional expenses he insisted we split, I could barely afford anything more than plain boiled eggs every day. Even when I was heavily pregnant and caught in a downpour, if I tried to call a cab, he'd lecture me for lacking the independence a modern woman was supposed to have. Yet when another woman told him she was “having a bad day,” he didn't hesitate to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxury goods for her. He even paid her expensive tuition to study abroad. I thought I'd already become numb to it all, so numb that I was prepared for whatever came next, even if it killed me. Then came the day when his disgusting penny-pinching calculations went too far. He tried to make me pay my “share” of the medication I needed to stay alive.

In our third year of marriage, my wife's kept boy toy decided he wanted to break up with her. He left her nothing but a long, dramatic message and blocked her on every platform before she could respond. [You can't give me what I actually want. I don't want to keep dragging this out with you.] I watched my wife's romantic drama play out with a cold, distant expression. After three years of them breaking up and getting back together more times than I could count, I figured this was nothing new. I expected Elena Sheridan to rush straight to coax him back like always. But this time, she was ice cold about it. "He was just a plaything I kept around for amusement. Now he thinks he can threaten me with a breakup? I’ve clearly indulged him too much." But a month later, the news broke online. He'd jumped from a building. The woman who had always been cold and unfeeling completely fell apart.

At the reunion, the wives got rowdy and dared each other to take part in a "best husband" challenge. Each woman had to call her husband and ask for 6,000 dollars to buy a bag. Whoever got a yes first would win. As expected, Matthew Whitebrook picked up almost instantly, his voice gentle. "Buy it, baby. You remember the card password, right?" Everyone groaned with envy and said I'd hit the jackpot by landing the better of the twin brothers. I laughed and hung up, then glanced at my sister, who sat curled up in the corner. She clutched her phone but refused to make the call. "I won't bother," she said quietly. "He's on another business trip. He won't pick up anyway." My sister had been dating Matthew's older twin brother for three years, but he was constantly away on business. Almost no one had ever seen him in person. I felt bad for her, so I snatched the phone from her hand and dialed the number myself. It rang twice before someone answered. "Baby, why the sudden call?" The room fell silent. That voice was identical to the one that had told me, "Buy it, baby," just ten seconds earlier. For a moment, I thought I had misheard. But when I turned to my sister, her face had already gone white. She snatched the phone back, her smile strained. "Bad signal. You must have misheard." However, I had heard it clearly. From the other end of the call came the unmistakable sound of the record player in my own living room, the one I had forgotten to turn off before I left the house that afternoon.

I didn't come from money, so everyone around my rich girlfriend decided I had to be a gold digger. Nobody more than Tristan Reed, her male best friend. He told them he'd been kept by rich women himself, so he understood men like me better than anyone. To prove I wasn't that kind of man, I never accepted a single expensive gift from Vivian Ford during the three years I spent with her. Tristan had an explanation for that too. "He says no out loud, but he's waiting for her to offer something better on her own. It's called playing hard-to-get." Then came Vivian's birthday. I'd saved six months of my salary and bought her a necklace. I was almost at the door of the private room when I heard Tristan laughing. "See? I told you he'd buy something expensive. "That's the oldest trick a gold digger has. Pretend you're not after the money, then trade a little of it for a lot." Vivian sat beside him filing her nails. She didn't contradict him. Someone egged him on. "Vivian, your boyfriend's not just a gold digger, he's a professional." Then somebody spotted me and made a hushing gesture. "Quiet, he's here." Tristan just scoffed. "Some men ought to be honest like me. That's what rich women actually want. Am I wrong?" Vivian was quiet for a long moment. Then she looked up at me. "After all this time pretending in front of me, were you really just waiting for one big payout?" I stood in the doorway, and the necklace in my hand suddenly felt too heavy to hold. I didn't answer. I just turned around and left. A heart that's doubted every single time is one I'm taking back for good.

The day my daughter was fighting for her life, my wife, Shirley Hartley, was busy helping her childhood friend Oliver Burke get married. I called seventeen times. On my eighteenth try, she finally picked up. "Shirley, Nyssa's getting worse. The doctor says she needs life support now. They want twenty grand upfront. Where's the money?" Her voice turned ice-cold. "I used it. Oliver's wedding is coming up, and that stuff costs money. I'm not letting his fiancée's family look down on him. "Nyssa just has asthma, right? She coughs a little and suddenly they want twenty grand? Sounds like a scam." Nyssa lay in the hospital bed, her tiny face ghost-pale. Her eyes slowly opened. "Daddy, I want Mommy." I turned away, biting my lip hard so she wouldn't see me cry. "Mommy'll be here soon." But over the phone, Shirley snapped, "Oliver still hasn't picked out his wedding suit. I don't have time for you freaking out over this." Then she hung up. By the time I scraped together the twenty grand, forty minutes were gone. Half an hour later, the doctor came out of the ER. He pulled off his mask and shook his head. "If we'd started treatment thirty minutes earlier, she might've had a chance." Then my phone buzzed. A transaction alert. Shirley had taken the money that could've saved Nyssa and bought Oliver a $220,000 Maybach. I looked at Nyssa's blue-tinged face and called my lawyer. "Draw up the divorce papers. "And pull the records for every expense Shirley ever covered for Oliver. "I want every cent of our money back."

Sandra's ex-boyfriend had cancer, yet he still found the energy to keep pestering her. So I anonymously sent him a sum of money to make him leave her alone. But when Sandra found what I'd done, she threw the bank card in my face and shouted, "Why would you humiliate a dying man with money? He's already pitiful enough!" I looked at her calmly. "You're my wife. You shouldn't be worrying about another man."

After five years of hurting each other, I was finally tired of Aiden Russell. Five years ago, I finally brought down the biggest drug lord in the Walled City and avenged my father, Paul Chadwick, who had died in the line of duty. But Aiden refused to let the drug lord's daughter, Naomi Siddall, die. He even threatened to take his own life just to force me to agree. After the operation, Aiden brought Naomi back to our home. From that day on, we never stopped hurting each other. Once, I held a knife to Naomi's throat. Aiden immediately pointed his gun at me without hesitation. When I threw away Naomi's medicine, Aiden stripped me and threw me out into the freezing snow. Then one day, Naomi timidly hid behind Aiden while holding a positive pregnancy test. I watched the way Aiden protected her. And suddenly, I felt completely hopeless. Right in front of him, I removed all five bullets from my revolver. Then I pressed the gun against my temple. "Aiden, let's make a bet. Russian roulette. One chance in six. If the first five chambers are empty, you let me walk away. From that moment on, we have nothing to do with each other. But if one of those first five chambers has a bullet, then consider it the life I'm giving you. And a birthday gift for your unborn child."

I've been married to Joel Hoover for three years. But whenever we go out with my best friend, Cynthia Marsh, people assume they're the couple. At the mall, sales associates hand them the gifts meant for couples. At restaurants, servers ask if they want to take part in the couples' promotion. When we travel, strangers compliment them on what a great couple they make, then hand me a phone to take their picture. At first, it makes me uncomfortable, but Joel never corrects anyone. Cynthia always laughs it off. "Maybe we just happen to look like a couple. Don't read into it." She says it so casually that every time, I tell myself not to make a big deal out of it. Then Joel tells me he's finally taking me to meet his family at a holiday dinner. I spend three whole months getting ready. But the moment we walk in, his mother grabs Cynthia's hand, beaming. "Just look at these two. Don't they make a perfect couple?" The relatives immediately start teasing them too. "You two must kiss a lot. You're even starting to look alike!" The whole room erupts in laughter. I stand there, watching Joel. He doesn't correct anyone. He just reaches over and tucks a loose strand of Cynthia's hair behind her ear. That's when it finally hits me. Joel isn't staying quiet because he can't be bothered to explain. He just doesn't want me to be his wife.

Mandy York, my girlfriend, was practically a migratory bird that always flew away during summer. Every year, during July and August, which were the hottest months of the year, she would fly off and disappear from the face of the earth. She said that it was because her company gave her a special project abroad that required absolute secrecy from her. She was also not to contact anyone during that period of time. Even when I got into a car accident last year and lay in the ICU for two months, she never called to ask about me. Plenty of times, I had comforted myself and endured the harsh summer alone. One day, I accidentally saw the social media account of a friend of mine living abroad. It was his alternate account. Every year, during July and August, this alternate account would get really active. It would be full of videos and photos about his daily life with his daughter and a “mother” who always had her face hidden with stickers. In the videos, the mother accompanied the daughter to watch fireworks at Disneyland and pick up shells at the beach. Sometimes, I could see the side of her face. There was a mole at the corner of her eyes. I could even see a clear scar at the back of her hand. They were so familiar to me that my blood ran cold. It was Mandy. During the summer holidays, she would vanish for sixty days, and this had lasted for five years. So, she had never been flying off to work. She had gone to her other family. I sat stupefied on the couch and stared at the blinding sun outside. Suddenly, this year’s upcoming summer did not feel so difficult any longer. I picked up my phone and agreed to the marriage my family had arranged for me. Since Mandy refused to stay with me during summer, I was not going to waste my time on her.

My girlfriend, Eliana Hodson, and my so-called best friend, Austin Brock, had this thing for bets. And somehow, I was always the joke. They'd bet on how long I'd wait for them, which puddle I'd slip in when it rained, even whether the crazy-hot pepper Austin snuck into my food would make my nose run. Then Austin went overseas. Eliana and I got married, and I figured their stupid little game was finally over. Yeah. Nope. One night, I was working at a fancy lounge when I walked in on a group playing a betting game called Time Bomb. I set down their drinks just as I heard Eliana. "I lost." Her friends started yelling. "A bet's a bet! Pick a guy and dance with him!" Then Eliana—my wife, who had supposedly been paralyzed for three years—stood up and went straight to Austin. They spun across the dance floor as everyone clapped. One friend laughed. "Eliana, you're seriously messed up. Fake marriage, fake paralysis—you've kept Rafael as our entertainment for three years." Eliana laced her fingers with Austin's. "I lost the bet. Had to do it." Austin doubled over laughing. "We bet on whether Rafael would spend six years taking care of her. Eliana said no. I said yes. "Guess who's winning? "All it took was one fake marriage certificate. Even when Eliana pretended she couldn't walk, Rafael bought the whole thing. Dude carried her up and down the stairs for three years! "I know Rafael way better than she does. I'm gonna win." I stood in the shadows and smiled. 'So the bets never stopped. 'Fine. 'I'm done being part of their stupid game.'

Jewel Rivers hated nothing more than having to turn back. If she left something behind, she would move on without it. If she took a wrong turn, she kept going. She said, "Turning back is a waste of time. The only way is forward." She even drove right past me without stopping one night after I had worked late. I texted her, "I just saw your car drive by. Can you turn around and pick me up?" Three minutes later, she replied, "Rules are rules. I don't turn back. Take a cab home yourself." - The next day was our eighth anniversary. We had planned to go to the nearby theme park together. Twenty minutes after we set out, my close friend, Jason Smith, sent a message in the group chat the three of us shared: [Jewel, you left your hair clip on my couch when you drove me home last night!] I froze for a moment. "You picked him up from work last night?" "It was on the way," she said casually. Jason sent another voice message, his tone cheerful. "Jewel, Beau, you two are going to the theme park today, right? I want to go, too. Can we all go together?" We were already halfway there, and I was about to tell Jason to take a cab and meet us at the entrance. Before I could, Jewel replied, "Sure. I'll come pick you up." My throat tightened. "Didn't you say you never turned back?" She turned her car around without hesitation. "Rules aren't set in stone. We can adapt." When we reached Jason's apartment building, I got out and gave him the front passenger seat. "You two have fun. I'm not going. Jewel, I'll follow your example for once. I'm not turning back either." I had walked this road for eight years, and I had no intention of taking a single step back.

After five years together, Abby Young finally said she was ready to take me home to meet her parents. However, on the day of the visit, she asked my friend Gene Burke to pretend to be her boyfriend and told me to tag along for the free meal. “Abby, I’m your boyfriend! You’re supposed to introduce me to your parents today!” She did not even look up. “Gene just went through a breakup last month. He wants to know what it feels like to meet a girlfriend’s parents, so let him have this one.” I refused to move. Gene sighed. “Forget it. I was only joking. You two should go.” He started to get out of the car, but Abby held him back. “Stay where you are. You’re not going anywhere.” Then, she pulled me into the car and said to me in a persuasive tone, “Tony, it’s only one dinner. I’ll explain everything to my parents after this. Just this once.” Left with no real choice, I reluctantly agreed. When we arrived at her parents’ house, Mr. Young’s face lit up the moment he saw Gene. “Gene, you’re here! Come in! We’ve been looking forward to seeing you. I even made that dessert you love!” Abby went inside with a smile, leaving me alone on the doorstep as though I did not belong there. I turned to her. “How do your parents know Gene?” Abby rubbed her nose, looking guilty. “Actually, this is the third time I’ve brought him home. I was worried about him after his breakup, so I’ve been passing him off as my boyfriend whenever we visit my parents.” I laughed in disbelief. I threw everything I was holding at her feet and turned to leave. “You can enjoy your little family dinner without me.”