Past Tense Novels & Stories

"I think he finally did." I nodded slowly. "Too late doesn't mean nothing," I said. "It just means too late." He looked at me. "My mother used to say regret was just understanding arriving after the invoice," I said. "You still pay. You just don't get what you paid for." "She sounds like someone worth knowing." "She is." I paused. "I keep using the present tense and then remembering I haven't seen her yet." I looked at my hands. "I know she's there. I know she's waiting. I just—"

Someone who had something large to say and knew that the large version would not reach me the way the small version would. She was proud. Present tense would have been too much. Future tense would have been a promise neither of us could make. The past tense was honest. Past tense was the only thing that could not be argued with or taken back or procedurally challenged. She was proud. While she was alive. Whatever came before and after, that part was true. I pressed my hands flat on the cold stone wall and breathed. ++++++++

Getting him to have a meal with me used to require booking a date a month in advance. Even when we did go out, he was impatient and cold the entire time. When we left the restaurant in the past, he would never wait for me by the restroom, let alone carry my coat. He used to say, "Women are such a hassle", before walking straight to the parking lot. It was as if I were some virus he couldn't wait to escape from. Yet now, he stood there willingly, doing for Brooke what he had never been willing to do for me. I felt bitter, but I no longer wanted to dwell on it.

he asked and I frowned at him. “Huh?” I don’t know what is he even talking about. “It’s nearly dinner time and here you thinking about having breakfast.” When he uttered those words I glanced around to see that it is near to dark. “I just forgot the time and it happens.” I mumbled shrugging and started walking towards my tent holding the article carefully feeling my legs gone too stiff. And he just followed me silently without saying anything else. Why is he irritated just because I forgot the time? I shook my head and entered the tent only to stop in my tracks.

Hendrix sighed heavily and replied, "Mr. Scott, I'm afraid I can't provide the negatives right now. I'll try to re-shoot the series and send them to you as soon as possible." "Alright. Take your time," Jefferson replied. "The visa process will take at least half a month anyway." "Okay." Sabrina caught the key word. "Visa? You're going abroad?"

The twelve inches of leather and fifteen years and the way he’d looked at me — actually looked at me — when he said you always have been. Not you could have been. Not you should be. Always have been. Present tense applied backwards. Like it had never stopped being true. I was thirty four years old and that one small thing had done something to me that I didn’t fully have the language for yet. Which was its own kind of information. “There’s something else,” Cynthia said, watching me. “There’s always something else.”

"Of course I loved you." The air left my lungs. She used present tense. "For three years, Arthur." Her voice was stuffy with tears. "I loved you so much it made me stupid. So much I convinced myself the crumbs you threw me were a feast. So much I forgot what I was worth." She had switched to past tense, but the damage was done. The confession was out in the air, poisoning me. "Past tense?" Arthur asked, echoing the question burning in my brain, then came a pause.

I said in a soft voice. He nodded “Yes. I know what i said. Theresa was the love of my life. But she ‘was’ liv. It is in the past tense. I wanted to have a future with you, I begged you to stay but you threw all that away goe Conrad. Who is dead. You decided to stay in the past while giving up the future we could have had” he said with a clenched jaw his eyes filled with pain. He turned and walked towards the door. I watched him leave with a fallen shoulder. It was evident that he was not enjoying this. That he did not want this.

Just a repositioning that said I was here and not a background element. "I am not part of any arrangement," I said. His eyes came back to me. "You were," he said. "Past tense." "Temporarily past tense," he said, and the correction was delivered with a patience that made it worse than anger would have been, the patience of someone who does not need to argue because they believe time is on their side. "You do not get to decide that," I said. The faint almost-smile returned, different from Ethan's controlled near-smiles, more openly assured of itself. "I rarely need to decide," he said. "Things tend to arrive at their intended posi

"She said: 'You're not sad anymore. You're wistful. Those are different.' And then she walked away." I smiled. "That sounds right." "What is the difference?" he said. "I wasn't sure I should ask her, she seemed to have moved on to something else." "Sad is present-tense," I said. "Wistful is past-tense. Wistful is when you miss something that was real and good and is gone, but the missing doesn't take up all the room." He stood with this for a moment. "Wistful," he said. "Yes."