Twenty Years Later Novels & Stories

"Your birthday is coming up, right? I'm planning to celebrate it early because I'm afraid something might happen around the date of the surgery." "Okay!" On the other end of the line, Louis sounded extremely excited, cheering jubilantly. Yvonne glanced at the hazy sheet of rain outside the window and said in a hoarse voice, "Let's make it the day after tomorrow." The day after tomorrow was October 2nd—the day I lost my child. While staring incredulously at the person before me, I realized I had perhaps underestimated the bond between them. Well, love was the most unreliable thing. Someone could say they loved you, but who was to say they wouldn't turn around and give that love to someone els

"Let him." He stood. The movement was fluid, predatory. He walked to the window, hands clasped behind his back, and stared out at the city below. Lights flickered like dying stars. "Twenty years." The words fell into the silence like stones into deep water. The second man said nothing. Didn't ask. Didn't need to. The man at the window turned slowly. The shadows carved his face into something sharp and unforgiving. He walked back to the desk. Picked up the photograph of Dario and the girl.

He was in his twenties now. Time said nothing, yet it quietly took so much away.

"It's up to you what you want to do now but I'm telling you, I will be back here tonight and you will come with me wherever I go, whether you want it or not!" And to make sure I couldn't refuse, he immediately left in front of me and went out of my office to which I just shook my head. That one was too childish, but even so, he stayed by my side even when I fell to the ground. I looked at the calendar on my desk and gasped when I saw what the date was today. It was five years ago. But it seems like yesterday because the pain of her leaving without even letting me know is still fresh in my mind.

Why is she not even looking at me or acknowledging my presence? She ceased communicating with me the final time she walked on me, banging with Claudia. I wish there was a way for me to communicate my feelings to her, but I can’t bring myself to tell a 22-year-old that I like her and want to have her. What if I revert to my former ways?

The only thing different was that I had developed a new longing for Christian. … In the blink of an eye, twenty years passed. I was no longer that twenty-something-year-old girl. Fine wrinkles had crept around the corners of my eyes, a few silver strands streaked my hair, my hands were heavily calloused, and my skin had turned a sun-kissed tan.

"Goodbye, Luke." "Mara." She stopped but didn't turn. "We're not done." "We were done when I signed the papers." Now she turned. Her eyes met mine with the flat certainty of a woman who had prepared for this moment and was inside the preparation. "That was five years ago." "Then why are you back?" "Business." She looked at me for one final measured moment. "Goodbye, Luke." She walked through the sliding doors. Both boys went with her; the bold one throwing one last look over his shoulder with his mother's directness, the quiet one moving with the composed certainty of a child who had learned composure by proximity.

ADAM: "What do you think I should get her for her birthday this Saturday dude? she is going to be nineteen and I think she kind of has everything in this world because of how rich her family is, what can I get her that she would appreciate?" Cole went on and on while I followed after him

“What is best for me is marrying you. What is this about? Are you getting cold feet and trying to use me as an excuse?” “No, I just don’t want you to have any regrets.” I wipe my eyes as he pulls in through the gate and parks. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I don’t want you to have any regrets.” “I don’t have any regrets,” I shout through my tears. “Right now you don’t, but twenty years from now—” “Twenty years from now, we will be celebrating our twentieth anniversary.” “Fenice, please.”

“Most people haven’t.” He took a slow step closer to the glass. “They were wiped out twenty years ago.”