قصص وروايات قصيرة من فئة Romance وعن Melodramatic وتضم Independence وتدور في Regret

While packing Ethan's flight bag, I found a custom solo wings pin. The engraving on the back read: For Lark, to celebrate your first solo. Beneath the box sat the receipt for Skyler's flight school tuition, paid in full by Ethan, along with a photograph. In the photo, she was sitting in the pilot's seat. Ethan's gloved hand rested over hers on the control yoke. Seven years ago, I had sat in that same seat. Back then, I was one step away from my first solo flight, but Ethan talked me out of it again and again, always claiming it was "for my own good." He said flying was dangerous, that someone had to stay home and take care of things. I put down my logbook, pressed the wrinkles out of every one of his captain's uniforms, and spent seven years living by his flight schedule. Only now did I finally understand. It wasn't that he didn't want to take anyone flying. He just didn't want to take me. What made it even more absurd was that the night Skyler first flew through the clouds, I was alone in a hospital, losing our baby. I called him over a dozen times. At three in the morning, he finally called back, his voice flat and indifferent. "I just took Lark through the clouds. Next time something comes up, give me a heads-up." I put the wings pin back exactly where I found it, then pulled the crumpled ultrasound printout from the bottom of the drawer and tucked it inside the logbook that had been gathering dust for seven years. This time, I wasn't going to wait for him to look back. He convinced me to leave the pilot's seat, then turned around and put another woman in the sky. So I would leave him and take back the sky that had always been mine.

The day before our wedding, I received an expensive suit from my wife. Not long after, her young lover called me, his voice trembling. "I'm sorry. It was my fault. My bad for mixing up your size. Please… please don't blame Sylvie." On the other end, I could hear Sylvie soothing him gently, patiently, until he calmed down. I stared at the plane ticket in my hand—a one-way trip out of the country—and calmly asked her for a divorce. Then, as if I no longer mattered, she left me with a single, cold sentence. "Just don't regret it."

While attending a class reunion with my wife, we ran into her old flame—Caelum Zeth. After the gathering, Talia Grant cornered Caelum against a wall. When she found out he had fallen on hard times, she kissed him. "How much do you still owe? Be with me. I'll give you 100 thousand a month. Will that be enough?" I stood quietly at the corner of the street and snapped a photo of their heartfelt reunion before sending it to my lawyer. I also forwarded it to Talia, along with a message, "Since you two are so in love, go ahead and marry him."

My twin sister Selena was the most troublesome grad student my fiancé, Professor Adrian Hall, had ever taken on. Skipping class, showing up late, doctoring observation curves. Every time she walked into his lab, the two of them seemed ready to set the whole college on fire. I told Adrian to stop using that tribunal tone with her. But he explained, "Eve, if she keeps drifting like this, sooner or later she'll ruin herself." When he looked at Selena, his gray-blue eyes were as cold as a lake on a winter night. "Have every raw record on my oak desk before eight tomorrow morning. One page short, and you don't set foot in the observation tower for the rest of the month." I felt embarrassed for Selena, and grateful that I'd fallen for the right man. Adrian Hall was the youngest tenured professor at St. George's College. Tall and lean, always in a dark gray cashmere coat, shirt buttoned to the very top. He could dismantle an entire model in the calmest voice, and still hold an umbrella over me on a rainy night, so gentle it made me believe I was the one exception outside his academic world. Until the day we were preparing the wedding invitations. I borrowed his tablet, and my finger accidentally slipped into a document buried under layers of folders. Inside were five hundred and twenty memos. [Punishment No. 519: Selena talked back to me again. I kept her in my office and fucked her until three in the morning;by the end she didn't have the strength left to even look up at me.] [Punishment No. 520: She got jealous. She insisted I leave something behind inside Eve's wedding dress — to prove that the white gown meant to symbolize purity could be dirtied by her too.] With trembling hands, I scrolled to the video at the very bottom. On the screen, the aloof and untouchable Professor Hall was down on one knee on his office carpet, kissing the rose tattoo on Selena's ankle. "Selena, stop torturing me. Whatever you want, I'll give it to you, alright?"

It was midnight, and I was out at my stall when the cops took me to the station. They checked my profile and looked at me weirdly. "You're a Greatpeak graduate. What are you doing setting up shop in a bazaar?" That was odd. I went through the profile and realized that yes, while the student's ID was mine, the photo was not. I knew the guy in the photo. Josiah Ferguson. I had no idea I got accepted into Greatpeak University twenty years ago. Eventually, I was released, but I had no idea how I trudged back home. Then, I heard Hazel Quinley, my wife, talking to someone on the phone. "I won't let Michael get in your way, Josiah. Just go abroad." So that's it! It was her! My wife helped Josiah take what was supposed to be mine! I was sick. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to confront her and Josiah, but then she stabbed me in the back, and I died. "I'm sorry, Michael. I can't let you ruin Josiah's future." And then I woke up. I was taken back in time to my high school days. Our homeroom was giving out college application forms. This time, things would be different. This time, I would take back what was rightfully mine!

My husband Marcus Ashford has severe social anxiety. In three years of marriage, he refused to meet a single one of my friends or family. Even our wedding was just the two of us, because he said a crowd would trigger a panic attack. Because it hurt me to see him like that, I put up with my parents' disappointment and my friends' confusion, made every excuse for him, and guarded his fragile little world with both hands. That changed tonight, when I stumbled onto the social media page of his first love, newly returned from overseas. In the photos, Marcus moved through the room with Chloe, working the toasts with total ease, laughing wide and unguarded. I opened the next live photo, and a snatch of conversation came out of it. "Marcus, isn't today your father-in-law's birthday too? You're not going to swing by?" Marcus answered as though it were nothing, "Going would just be pointless socializing. A waste of time. I'd rather stay here with Chloe." I went through those few photos over and over, more times than I could count, until my eyes were dry and stinging, and then I shut off the screen without a word. Then I called a lawyer and had the divorce papers drawn up. So his world was full of voices and noise after all. It simply refused to open for me, and for me alone. Fine. If the party wasn't mine, I wasn't going to keep forcing my way in.