Word Choice Novels & Stories

The longer the silence stretched, the more uncomfortable I got. Richmond didn't talk much, at all. At work, he barely made conversation he didn't have to. He didn't care for mindless chit chatter and he certainly didn't give a fuck what the weather was. He talked only when it was most necessary for him to, otherwise, he was always quiet, observant.

She offered a look, the particular assessment of someone who was measuring me for something I couldn't yet see. "You're smaller than I expected," the twin said. "For someone who eats monsters." "I don't eat them," I said. "I burn them. There's a difference." "Is there?" The twin's smile was sly, practiced, the particular smile of someone who'd learned to weaponize charm. "Burning, eating - both leave nothing but ash. Both make you the thing that ends other things. Seems like a semantic distinction to me." I felt it then - the wrongness in her word choice, the particular phrasing that didn't match a student's vocabulary, that carried the weight of someone who'd

“I applied with politics in mind. But it was so boring, I switched to psych end of last semester. But that was really hard and twice the snooze fest. So this semester I went with something easier. Literature I think or whatever. I don’t know. If it doesn’t work out, my best friend is a business management major. It can’t be too hard if she can do it so I’ll probably switch to that. And—Oh!” She rushes off with a loud squeal finding someone near the entryway to talk to, while Jordan folds his arms and stares at me again. “What,” I finally ask, when I can’t take the judgmental look. “Seriously,” he asks. I look at Adam and Antonio, but they’re back to entertaining their Sigmas. “What do you me

"I'll buy her a glow stick later. Thank you. Now, go back to your parents, okay?" "Mister, you must have a baby girl with your wife. She'd be as pretty as her mom!" Jesse chuckled. "All right, I'll work on it." When he returned to Courtney's side, he half-jokingly suggested, "Babe, let's have a daughter." Courtney asked, "Do you really want kids?" "Actually, I prefer just the two of us. But don't most women want a child with the man they love?" "That's what M—"

Kopa opened the door to announce the riders were now rearranging themselves with the wagons and they could continue the journey in ten minutes. The day then consisted of one of the women in the carriage giving Mary a new word in Salamis, Mary repeated it aloud a couple of times and then concentrated on trying to remember it. After a while, she was asked if she remembered the different words. Mary discovered it was surprisingly easy to remember the different words. What caused her biggest problem was the pronunciation. Salamis was more melodic and had more nuances within the melody than common had. Their little game meant she didn't have the time or energy to think about her decision or her f

I thoug‍h⁠​t‌‍ abo⁠ut‍ that wor‌d for a l‌‌on⁠g ti‍me​. Choice.​​ ⁠ I could​ choo⁠se to be d‍iffe​re​nt‌. ‍⁠I could choose‍ t⁠o‍ a‌​p‌o⁠lo⁠gize whe‌n I was wrong‌. I co⁠‌u‍l‍d ch​oose to listen in‍ste‌ad of co​n​trol.‌ I co​u‌​ld ch​oose to st⁠ay when‍ t⁠hings became difficul‌t inst⁠⁠ead of runni‌‍ng be​hind work. I coul​d choose to te‍l‌l​ my chi‌ldren I loved them w‌‍ithout expecting th​‌e⁠m to earn it.​

I quietly looked at him, my heart no longer hurting as much as I had imagined it would. “Luca,” I called softly. The child immediately looked up, as if grasping onto his last bit of hope. “When you grow up, you’ll understand that liking one person doesn’t mean you can use another person as a stepping stone. “You looked down on me for being injured, not being able to hold a gun steadily, or being the mother you wanted. Those things were real. “And your regret today is real, too. “But regret doesn’t take back words that have already been spoken.”

She said, sniffing between words. "No, don't say that; you have everything to live for. You…" "I have nothing to leave for!" She interupted. "Do you know how it feels not to make your own choices, and have the freedom you deserve? Do you know how it feels to lose the only person who understands you the most? Do you know how it feels to be banned from being with the one person that your heart yields for? If you do, you won't be telling me this right now." She wailed.

Corin said, from his position at the edge of the circle, and the flatness of the word was the flatness of someone who has chosen the word precisely because its flatness is exactly right for the moment — not dressed up, not explained, just the thing itself. The word settled into the room with the quality of something that lands differently in different people depending on what they have been taught to understand by it, and the range of responses was the range of people for whom the word meant something hopeful and people for whom it meant something untested and people for whom it meant something threatening, and all three categories were genuinely represented in the room.

I spoke softly, "The old Lois was sick, but I'm not that person anymore. After leaving him, I recovered." After a long silence, Chris smiled, a mix of helplessness and affection. I looked at him and smiled, too. Thank God I hadn't lost anything in this life.