The Story I Tell Novels & Stories

"Hey, this is a story I hate But I told it to cope with the pain I'm so sorry if you can relate~" Author note: This is a special sneak peak for a story! I'll publish it here soon

Elle POV. “Tell me a story” I whisper over the phone, tonight was one of the worst nights ever, I had several nightmares back to back, I woke more than once but I managed to get back to sleep, but the last one was very bad. I couldn’t go back to sleep, I was scared of my own mind, having an overactive imagination turned to be a curse in lonely nights, every sound, every murmur my brain translated and turned into a monster hiding in the darkness.

So I decide to tell him the full story. I was close to tears as I narrated the whole story to him while still looking at the ground. Talking about it brought back all the memories of how much they had hurt me and made me feel so less about myself. Everyone else had caring and loving family members, why did my own have to be so different? "So that's been the story of my life. You didn't think I overreacted or something? Or did I?", I asked as I should raised my eyes to look at his for the first time since I started speaking.

My hand moved to her hair almost without conscious thought, threading through the soft strands. She made a small sound of contentment, and that ache in my chest intensified. What story could I tell her? Fairy tales weren't exactly my specialty. I'd grown up with violence and survival, not bedtime stories. But there was one story I knew. One story that had shaped everything I'd become. "Once upon a time," I began, my voice low, "there was a little Russian boy who had everything taken away from him." My fingers moved through her hair in slow, soothing strokes as I spoke.

I sighed softly. "Dear, we want to hear more about you," she said again, smiling softly. I had no idea that they wanted to hear my stories. What should I tell them? I come from a violent home where my father punches my mother and my father never finds my existence, or I ran away from home to be free from torment. What should I tell them? "I...pa.int." I quavered; that was the only thing that came out of my mouth. "You do paint that lovely, darling." His mother was so excited to hear that from me that it gave me the courage to speak up.

I had come to Miami to find a story worth telling. I had ended up as the story, the one nobody could take from me, and I ruled every word of it.

Back then, I told myself they were just like family, so there was no need to get jealous. However, all those little signs I had ignored played back in my head, over and over. When she came back, we launched our design studio. I landed a whale of a client, a deal that put us on the map overnight. On the night of our big bash, I had one too many and wanted her to pick me up. I called over and over, but got nothing. Finally, a coworker ended up driving me home. The morning after, she came to me with puffy, red eyes, spilling the story of how Yoel was heartbroken, how he had drowned his sorrows in booze at the bar, and how she had stayed with him through the night.

On the way home, my mother asked me, “Did your father really have no feelings for me at all?” I had lied to my mother. In my version of the story, my father never loved her. He only used her. The truth was that his love always came too late. He only felt sorry after she was already gone. That had been true in the old timeline. It had proven itself to be true again in the new timeline. But what difference did that make? I had been given one chance to stop her before it was too late.

I sat back from the island. I had told this story in pieces. To Victoria across a folder of documents. To Noah on a Singapore rooftop in the early days when the telling was still fresh and raw. To Nina over eggs at nine-thirty with forty-three minutes of anger on the other side of it. I had told it in the clinical register of a legal deposition and in the private register of a woman processing her own history and in the careful, managed register of someone who understood that how a story was told shaped what the listener did with it. I had not told it to Ethan.

Before Conrad tried to kill me, he had said a lot of things. But it had been hurting so much that I couldn't remember everything clearly. The one thing that stuck with me was, "If it weren't for you, if it weren't for the Harmons, Kelly and I could've been together forever!" Well, the Harmons and I weren't in his way in this life. I'd love to see how he and Kelly would grow old together. In the teahouse, the air was thick with the fragrance of tea.