Cerita Pendek Melodramatic Romance & Novel Male POV Awakening

I'm born with the ability to see how much time remains in every relationship between two people. Throughout my 13 years of marriage to my wife, Francine Spence, the rare word "Forever" glows above both our heads. But on the eve of our son Oscar Baxter's birthday, I stumble upon a conversation between Francine and her client, Dale Stratton. In it, I discover that she has been letting Dale use Oscar as a substitute for his deceased son, Zachary Stratton, to ease his grief. In an instant, the golden word "Forever" vanishes, and in its place is a glaring crimson number—7 Days.

Marty Greene, a newly hired assistant, publicly humiliates me by calling me a worthless nobody who hangs around Audrey Melton. As my girlfriend and an award-winning actress who loves me more than life itself, Audrey promises to stand up for me. She devises a seven-day plan to build Marty up before bringing him crashing down. On the first day, she replaces me with Marty as her personal assistant, claiming she wants him to understand how hard I work. On the third day, she gives him a luxury car and a mansion, supposedly to make him lose himself in vanity. On the fifth day, she bakes him a birthday cake on a live reality show. She insists it's a crucial part of her plan and begs me to be patient. Then on the seventh day, my mother, Deborah Faulkner, suddenly falls gravely ill. As she lies dying, her final wish is to see Audrey one last time. Audrey readily agrees. But I wait at the hospital all night, and she never shows up. Instead, all I see is a post from Marty on X. "Audrey is simply too kind for her own good. She almost falls for a scam after just one phone call. Luckily, I'm smart enough to see through it and stop her from falling for it." Mom dies without ever getting to see Audrey again. It's not until the following day that Audrey finally calls. "Babe, just hang in there a little longer. I'm going to expose Marty's vanity and ruin his reputation at today's awards ceremony. Then, we'll go public with our relationship and have the wedding of the century to make Mrs. Landry happy." Audrey has no idea that Mom is already dead, and that I'm done waiting for her.

After remarrying Odette Fairbanks, Ezra Whitlock turns into the perfect husband, one who no longer checks up on her or gets jealous. He no longer wakes up early to make her a balanced breakfast, and he no longer shows up at the hospital right on time with a home-cooked lunch for her. Even when he finds a box of ultra-thin condoms on her passenger seat, he quietly puts it away for her and pretends he hasn't seen it. Odette, however, begins to panic and starts volunteering the very explanations she's always been too proud to give.

My girlfriend was known for being frugal and extremely stingy. When the chicken drumstick I loved went up by a dime, she decided they were too expensive and stopped buying them. When I got sick, she thought drinking warm water would be enough to make me better. Even the marriage certificate's nine-dollar processing fee was too much for her. She thought it was a waste of money. When the marriage certificate finally became free to acquire, I put on the only discounted suit she had been willing to buy for me and arrived at the city hall two hours early. I was eagerly waiting for her. Instead, from a distance, I saw her sitting by the lake with Henry, the male assistant she had hired six months earlier. A street photographer approached with a camera and asked if my girlfriend wanted some photos. Each photo cost a hundred dollars. I thought she would refuse on the spot, curse him for overcharging, and walk away. But she glanced at Henry beside her and said, "Henry, come to think of it, we've never taken a photo together. How about we take some?" Henry waved it off and said it was too expensive. The photographer quickly added that there would be a discount if they took more pictures. My girlfriend calmly retrieved her phone and transferred one grand to him. "No discount needed. Take a hundred photos of me and my junior. Put them in an album." I silently watched as my girlfriend and Henry posed intimately for a hundred photos. The time we'd agreed to meet finally arrived. My phone lit up. [I asked around. Although the marriage certificate itself is free now, we still need to take three ID photos. That's at least twenty dollars. That's enough to pay for one of our meals. Besides, getting the certificate is just a formality. We can still spend our whole lives together without it.] I quietly typed out a reply. [Okay. Let's not get married then.] I didn't want her anymore either.

The third time Queenie Stone meets Evan Sutherland's parents, she receives another message from her childhood friend, Joel Lodge. "I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland. Something came up. I have to go," she says. Evan reaches out and catches her wrist, frowning. "You have to leave right now? My parents have been preparing for this all day. At least stay and finish dinner." Queenie sets her phone down in front of him. In her chat with Joel are four simple words—"The fog's rolling in". "This is my code with Joel," she explains. "He has depression. Whenever he starts spiraling, he sends me this. We agreed that no matter what I'm doing, I'll drop everything and go to him when I see those words. No exceptions." She sounds so serious, as if Joel will drop dead if she doesn't leave that very second. "Can't you wait until after dinner?" Evan asks. "At most, you'll just need to stay for two more hours." "Evan, Joel doesn't send that code lightly. If he has, it means he's at his limit. If I'm late and something happens to him, I'll never forgive myself. I'm sorry." Queenie turns to Evan's parents. "Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland, I need to head out. I'll come by another day to apologize properly." She leaves without another look back. The front door slams shut, making Evan's parents jump. "Did something happen?" his mother asks. "Queenie left in such a hurry." Evan stares at the untouched dishes on the table and forces a stiff smile. Over the last five years, Joel has sent Queenie that code over 700 times. She could be on a movie date with Evan, yet the moment Joel's message comes in, she'll walk out halfway through the film. On New Year's Eve, before the fireworks even go off, she'll ditch Evan to go to Joel. Even when Evan has a 104-degree fever and is lying in bed needing someone to care for him, she'll still rush over to Joel in the middle of the night.

Someone uses AI to put my face in a pornographic video, and it gets over 20 million views. The day I decide to take legal action, everyone close to me tries to stop me. My childhood friend, Vivian Clark, corners me at the door, warning that suing will only make people believe the video is real. My best friend, Mike Crain, snatches the evidence out of my hands and throws it in the trash, insisting the people behind it are overseas, and the police will never track them down. Even my older brother, Graham Campbell, calls, telling me to think about our parents' health and stop disgracing the family. I take a deep breath. I finally manage to get away and head straight to my girlfriend Wanda Beckham's apartment. She's a lawyer. If anyone will help me clear my name, it's her. But when I walk in, I find her curled up on the couch in the arms of her childhood friend, Everett Patterson. He's casually admitting that he's the one who made the video, brushing it off as a mistake with the AI software. Wanda just laughs and hands him a beer. Vivian and Mike are there too, sipping their drinks as they joke about how Everett should have been the one dating Wanda all along. They say I've been standing in his way for years and had it coming. I freeze in the doorway. The people who ruined my life were right there beside me all along—and I was blind to it.