Cerita Pendek Melodramatic & Novel Mistress Cheating

This Thanksgiving, Elmer Fuller finally agrees to go on a trip with me. But when I wake up in the hotel, I don't see him anywhere. I spend the entire day desperately searching for him, only to stumble across a social media post from his first love. It's a selfie of her and Elmer having a cozy family dinner with her parents. The caption reads, "Someone's finally meeting the parents on Thanksgiving night. Mom and Dad can stop pressuring me to get married now!" Around her neck is the scarf my mother knitted for me before she passed. I left a comment. "Stop using my things to flirt with my husband. Take the scarf off—you can have him." Not long after, she posts an update. The scarf is shredded into pieces and tossed into a dog bed, with the caption, "What trash—too filthy even for a dog!" Elmer likes the post.

After her miscarriage, Elise Emery became exactly the wife Colsen Locke had always wanted. She quit telling him about her day. Quit calling when he stayed out all night. Even when an old man falsely accused her of hitting him with her car, she didn't call anyone. Didn't ask for bail. She just spent seven days in custody. At dusk on the seventh day, the precinct's iron gate clanged open. Elise had barely made it down the steps when a black Maybach screeched to a stop in front of her. The door swung open. Colsen stepped out in a custom suit, tall and lean, all broad shoulders and cold control. Same polished look. Same unreadable face.

For the first time ever since we got together, my boyfriend, Clarence Xenos, got angry with me because an eight-million-dollar company deal was ruined. In front of everyone, he belittled me and called me worthless. When we got home that night, he said in a cold corporate tone, “Work is work. There’s no ‘us’ in the office. You messed up, and that’s that.” An intern in our office, Naomi Smyth, texted me an apology. [Lucia, I’m so sorry. This was totally on me. But don’t worry, Clay got me a cupcake to cheer me up. It was actually pretty good. Do you want me to order one for you, too?] The next morning, Clarence habitually threw the breakfast I had prepared into the trash can. “How many times do I have to repeat myself? I don’t eat breakfast.” At work, my colleague, Zoey Thorpe, leaned in with a sly look and gossiped to me. “That new intern is so bold. She went up and talked to Mr. Xenos, and even bought him coffee and a sandwich. He not only ate them but also commented that they were delicious.” Whatever. I was beyond caring at that point. The person on my phone was still relentlessly trying to get me to be with him. [Look, if it doesn’t work out with him, I’m fine being the other guy. Just give me a chance, alright?] I pursed my lips and typed back. [There’s no need to be the other guy. You can just be my boyfriend.]

During the biggest sales day of the year, my fiance's "sweet and clueless" assistant sells a one-carat diamond for one cent. In just 20 minutes, the company loses 200 million dollars. I am so furious that my entire body shakes, yet Hendrick Shaw, my fiance, pulls me into his arms and comforts me, "Don't worry. I'll handle it." However, that same night, Selena Suther posts a screenshot on social media—a transfer of 1,430,000 dollars, with the recipient note saying "I love you." The caption attached to the screenshot is "I made a huge mistake today, but my boss comforted me instead. He even reminded me not to be angry at the 'tigress' and to be good." I comment on her post, "I wish you both happiness forever." Selena instantly deletes the post, but Hendrick abruptly charges in and lands a resounding slap on my cheek. "What's your motive for liking Lena's post? She's now so overcome by guilt and shame that she's about to end her life! "The company only lost 200 million dollars. Do you have to force her into a corner over it?" He sounds so righteous and fearless. Later, why does Hendrick cry when he can't even afford a 20-dollar meal?

Every year on my birthday, Yale Jensen would find some excuse to disappear into his study and write a letter in secret. The first time I caught him, he refused to let me read it. He only smiled and said, "After we're married." So I assumed the letters were for me, some grand romantic gesture he was saving for our future together. And every birthday, as another letter joined the rest, I kept waiting for the day he'd finally hand them over. That day came sooner than I expected. The night before we were supposed to get married at City Hall, Yale came home drunk from a business dinner. Barely coherent, he murmured, "The letters... have you read them yet...?" I took that as permission. It wasn't until I opened the first envelope that I realized I'd been waiting all those years for letters that had never been meant for me. [Yana, does it really not bother you at all that Tessa and I are together?] The second was worse. [Yana, I made Tessa a birthday dinner today. Thinking about you being overseas and missing out on all of this made me feel awful.] Then the third. [Yana, what am I supposed to do when I keep thinking about you every time I kiss Tessa?] ... I was Tessa Sinclair. Yana Cater was my best friend. The most recent letter had been written two months ago. Unlike the others, it contained only a single line, heavy with regret. [I'm sorry. I'm going to marry Tessa.] The paper crumpled in my fist. Then Yale's phone rang, and I picked it up. "Yale Jensen! You said you used a condom! How the hell am I pregnant?" Yana's hysterical voice came through the phone. I looked down at the letter still clenched in my hand. "He's asleep," I said. "You can call back tomorrow. Unless there's something you'd like me to pass along?"

I had been married to Rick Clinton for five years, and we had tried every possible way to have a child, but nothing worked. Later, Rick’s mistress, his secretary, became pregnant. Rick proposed a divorce, but we couldn’t agree on the division of assets. The next day, I was murdered by my husband and his mistress. Reborn a week before my death, I looked at the test results in my hand that confirmed Rick’s Azoospermia and smiled.

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.

During our return from the Frostfall Expedition, my boyfriend’s childhood sweetheart shoved me into a crevasse when I was caught off guard. Joshua Shaw pulled her into his arms to protect her, then turned around and yelled at me: "Linda, did you deliberately jump into the crevasse so you could frame Wendy for pushing you? "This expedition carries an important scientific mission. It isn’t a place for you to fight over a man!" A coppery sweetness rose in my throat, and the pain left me unable to speak. A short while later, a dull crack came from the ice beneath my feet, and my body suddenly dropped with it. Joshua became even more furious when he saw what happened: "Are you addicted to putting on an act now? If you like staying down there so much, stay there and come to your senses!" He even ordered the other team members to keep moving and forbade them from stopping to rescue me. However, he did not know that my right leg, trapped beneath the crevasse, had already been pierced by an ice spike. I could not move it at all. Worse still, my protective mask had shattered when I fell, and my body temperature was rapidly dropping. The system’s icy voice suddenly echoed in my mind. [Warning: The host’s life force is about to reach zero. Do you wish to leave this world permanently?] I watched Joshua protect Wendy Jones as they gradually disappeared into the distance. Then I closed my eyes and answered in my heart: "Yes!"

Willow Southfield, my wife, hated Luke Xavier, my childhood friend, the most. Luke hated her too. Whenever we met up, they would argue. Luke was half an hour late, and the first thing he said when he came through the door was, “Your makeup makes you look like you came straight out of a horror movie.” Willow threw his car keys into the ice bucket. “Fish them out and clear your mind.” My friends said that they were like oil and water, and I was always stuck between them, playing the peacemaker. Back then, we had been married for years, but we had no children. I told Willow that I was not in a hurry, but the idea of being childless hurt like a knife in my heart. Later, the doctors said that her fallopian tubes were blocked, and her chances of getting pregnant were slim to none. I was worried about her suffering from IVF, so I stopped our families from nagging at her to get pregnant. Meanwhile, Luke said to me, “Get a grip. You won’t be able to stay together for long if you’re childless. Just divorce her.” I was so mad that I nearly cut ties with him. But the next day, Willow approached me with an IVF form. With teary eyes, she said, “I’d like to try and have a child of our own.” On the day we learned that she was pregnant, I hugged her and cried. I thought that things would change for us. Then, three months later, Luke accidentally sent me a voice message while drunk. The voice was Willow’s. She sounded amused. “He touched my stomach today, and he looked so stupid.” “Did my baby kick him?” Luke asked in a whisper. When I finished listening to the voice message, I did not ask any questions. I just deleted the names that I had come up with for the baby.

I had an apartment at Westbridge Residences that had been empty since I got married. That day, the management called me. "Ms. Irwing, can you ask your tenant to be more careful when hanging laundry? Water dripped from their clothes and soaked a blanket downstairs." Then, they sent me a photo. Wet sexy lingerie hung on the balcony, with a pair of familiar men's underwear next to it. My heart sank, and I called my husband immediately. "Did you rent out the apartment at Westbridge Residences?" My husband went quiet for two seconds, then laughed. "Whoops! I was going to surprise you, but I guess you found out. I'll give you the rent when I get home." I pretended to be happy about it and praised him for helping bring in more money for the family. After hanging up, I turned around and went straight to the Westbridge Residences.  

On my 30th birthday, my husband, Miles Harrington, was out of town on a business trip. To make it up to me, he had a cake delivered. What arrived at my door was a Superman cake that looked like it belonged at a three-year-old's birthday party. I was about to call him when my phone rang. "Honey, you're not gonna believe this. That bakery messed up my order and sent you the wrong cake." I didn't think much of it. Instead, I posted the story on my social media account as a funny little birthday mishap. Comments started pouring in almost immediately. [Was it really the bakery's mistake, or does your husband have a kid somewhere?] I laughed it off. Miles and I had been together since college. We dated, got married, and built a life together. Other than not having children, we were the kind of couple people envied. But as the post gained traction and the comments kept coming, I decided maybe it was time to delete it. Before I could, I got a direct message from the bakery. [Hi there. I wanted to clarify, the delivery driver didn't mix up the orders. Mr. Harrington bought two cakes. He accidentally swapped the delivery addresses.]

At our ten-year reunion, Nathan Naylor, our former class president, starts a game of "Guess Who." Whoever guesses wrong has to drink three. When it's Jessica Slater's turn, she smiles. "There's this guy. He had his pick of the best universities in the country, but he gave up that chance for me. He spent years trying to win me over, doting on me the whole time." Everyone seems to know exactly who she's talking about, and all eyes turn to Dylan Tate. A little tipsy, Jessica gets bolder. "He has this tiny mole on his left hip. It shows when he plays basketball. On graduation night, I licked it." Everyone around the table starts whooping. "Why bother guessing? Just tell us you're together already! Come on, how long have you two been together?" Dylan holds his glass, his lips pressed tight, almost smiling. I tighten my grip on my phone as my heart sinks. Dylan and I have been together for seven years, and no one has a clue. But everyone knows he once tried to win Jessica over. Nathan taps the table. "Ashley, you're up," he says quietly. I look at Dylan and hesitate. "He..." Dylan looks up at me, a clear warning in his eyes. I switch gears. "He's been trying to win me over for ten years. This time, I don't want to miss my chance." My phone buzzes in my pocket. A single line appears on the screen. "Ashley, I've been waiting for you to say that!"

Five years into my marriage to Camille York, her boy toy leans against her during our family Christmas dinner and smirks at me. "Sorry about last night, Mr. Fuller. Cami kept me up way too late." Everyone assumes I'll lose it, that I'll lunge at him and ruin the entire evening. But Camille just glances lazily at the love score hovering above my head, utterly sure of herself. "He won't do a thing. He's crazy about me." What she doesn't know is that the number she sees is frozen at its highest point.

I had fallen in love with my father’s friend—the man I was supposed to call “uncle,” Kael Viremont. For a while, I thought he loved me too. We even had this silly little promise—that if I turned twenty-seven and still want to be with him, then we could be together, publicly. Five days before my twenty-seventh birthday, I overheard him saying he’d never liked me. That he was going to marry his childhood sweetheart. And as if that wasn’t cruel enough, he was planning to use the wedding to cut me off for good. So I did the one thing I should’ve done a long time ago—accepted that he and I would never belong to the same world… and disappeared from his life for good.

After graduation, I finally got what I'd wanted: a job in Bellshore alongside Callum Price and Brielle Sutton. They came up with one rule. Whenever something came up, we'd vote. Majority rules. Once, I accidentally got Callum's shirt wet. Brielle immediately said, "She always does this. Last time, she swiped my lipstick without even asking." Callum pulled out his phone. "Let's vote. Who's in the wrong?" Two votes to one. I had to apologize, pay for the shirt, and from then on, I wasn't allowed to touch his things. Yet Brielle wore that same T-shirt for years. On our second vacation, I wanted to go to the beach. They wanted to go hiking. Two votes to one again. That day on the mountain, Brielle looked at me and said, "Next time, don't bother voting against us. He only listens to me anyway." It happened so often that eventually, I went numb. And yet I was Callum's girlfriend. In five years, we'd cast more than a hundred votes, and not one had ever gone my way. Every time, they told me the same thing. I was wrong. I was being dramatic. I was overthinking everything. Then one day, my fever spiked to 102°F. For the first time, Callum hesitated. "She really doesn't look well. She hasn't had any energy for days." Brielle said, "Why don't we vote and see?" With my eyes closed, I listened as they quietly discussed the options. Option A: I was genuinely sick and needed someone to take care of me. Option B: I was faking it to get their attention. In the end, Callum decided, "Option C. Same old thing. No need to worry about her." The rich smell of barbecue drifted over from the table. I'd never felt so exhausted in my life. Soon after, I booked a flight to Westhaven. I left our group chat. And I decided to leave the game that had always been rigged against me.

I endured hundreds of injections just to give Stanley Brighton a child. He was moved to tears and held me, promising that even if we couldn't have children, he would love only me. I diligently followed the doctor's advice and underwent treatment. The day I confirmed my pregnancy, I was so excited that I wanted to rush home and share the good news with Stanley. But what awaited me was unimaginable. Stanley and the female tenant we shared the apartment with were lying naked together in the bathroom, sharing an intimate bath. He was behind her, holding her close, his lips incessantly biting at her earlobes. "I'll give you as many children as you want! Ten, eight—whatever it takes! Just divorce her!" "Alright, just give me some time. I'll divorce her for sure!" Hearing their whispered entanglement, I turned away, stepping into the rain, determined to leave. I would disappear to a place where Stanley could never find me, not in this lifetime.

The day I turn 18, Jacob Pratt and I make a promise to watch the sunset at Crescent Lake together after we graduate from college. He says that when the sunset spreads across the lake, we'll have a bright future waiting for us too. Four years later, the day finally comes. But on the day we're supposed to leave, I suddenly come down with a high fever and have to stay at the hotel. That evening, I still can't bring myself to miss the sunset I've been waiting years to see. So after taking some medicine, I go to the lake alone. When I step onto the viewing platform, I see Jacob kissing my best friend, Susie Kinsella, under the sunset. His best friend, Andy Hall, is holding a camera, grinning as he records them. Susie leans against Jacob. "What if Hannah finds out about us?" Andy snorts. "You've hidden it from her for six months without getting caught. Why are you worried now?" "When are you going to tell her?" Susie looks at Jacob. With his eyes on the sunset, Jacob replies calmly, "I'll tell her when we get back. I promised to come with her to Crescent Lake, and I've kept my promise." He pulls Susie close. "From now on, you're the only one I'll share views like this with." Their laughter blends into the cheers from the crowd. No one notices me just a few steps away. I take off the necklace Jacob gave me, put it on the bench by the lake, and leave. At 18, I thought watching a sunset together was the perfect ending to love. At 22, I finally understand that even though the promise has been fulfilled, the person who promised to watch it with me has already fallen for someone else.

A few days before my postpartum period ended, I found two plane tickets to Mirelia tucked inside Daryl’s wallet. I was secretly delighted. I thought he had planned a surprise for me. But on the very day I was supposed to recover, he told me that his company had suddenly sent him on a business trip. I tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep—only to see his first love post on social media. [Finally fulfilled our promise to kiss at Saint Vyron Cathedral. Thank you, God. After all this time, it’s still you.] The photo showed the two of them holding hands and kissing. I didn’t confront him right away. Instead, I turned to look at my sleeping daughter beside me, then picked up my phone. [Dad, I've made up my mind. I'll take over the family business.]

My husband, Shawn Payne, goes bankrupt overnight. That very night, he ships me and our son, Tommy Payne, off to a deserted island, claiming it's the only way to keep us safe from his creditors. Worried sick about leaving him to face the danger alone, I sneak back home halfway there, only to find him throwing a wild party, his arms wrapped tightly around a beautiful woman. His best friend, Ryan Foster, needles him. "You dumped your wife and son in the middle of nowhere. How are they going to survive out there?" Shawn shrugs like it's no big deal. "Yvonne's closing down her dog food factory anyway. I had all the surplus kibble repackaged and shipped to the island. It's more than enough to keep them fed for a few years." The woman, Yvonne Sullivan, purrs and snuggles deeper into his chest. "Oh, babe, you're so good to me and the baby," she coos, gently stroking her belly, which isn't even showing yet. He taps the tip of her nose affectionately. "You're so innocent and soft-hearted. If I don't look out for you, who will?" He pulls Yvonne closer and continues, "For your sake, I had to ship that shrew off to some godforsaken island. If she ever found out you were pregnant, she'd tear you apart. Once you have the baby and she turns two, I'll bring them back. By then, it'll be a done deal. There's nothing she can do about it." His words hit me like a ton of bricks. A cold sweat soaks me to the skin. Three years later, right on schedule, he calls. "Hey honey, how are you and Tommy doing? I'm ready to come pick you guys up." I glance at the man beside me, and a rush of satisfaction washes over me. "We're doing great," I reply. "My new husband treats both me and your son incredibly well."

On New Year's Eve, I hurry home from abroad to surprise my wife, Moira Wesley, from whom I've kept my return a secret. But when I push open the front door of our home, I'm greeted by the sound of laughter and friendly chatter. Overcome with emotions, I enter the house to see Moira with a baby in her arms as she announces sweetly, "Today, we celebrate New Year's Eve and Beatrice's one-month birthday! Happy New Year, everyone!" Upon hearing my entrance, Moira glances over her shoulder, then turns and walks toward me. She grabs the mug of hot tea on the table and splashes it at me. "Who are you? How dare you trespass into a private residence on New Year's Eve?" I try to ignore the burning pain on the left side of my face as I grab Moira's arm, hoping she'll explain herself. However, she shrugs off my grip and gives me another hard slap. "Noah, call the police! Tell them a suspicious person broke into our home and is attempting to rob us!" After that, Moira winks at me, then turns with the baby in her arms and joins an older couple. "Francine, Eric, don't worry about that. It was someone irrelevant." I stand in place, watching as the large family has fun in the house that now seems so unfamiliar, and feel a sudden wave of emptiness wash over me.