"I'm not okay!" I yelled at him. "Okay?! I'm not okay." My chest rose up and down as I breathed heavily. It had been years since I had a break down, and I wasn't going to have one right now. "It's okay not to be okay," he whispered, walking closer to me. He caressed my cheek, trying to sooth me. I stared at him, pain filled my eyes. I was trying hard not to cry. I couldn't cry. That's not what I did. "It's okay to cry," he comforted. His eyes stared so hard into mine I felt like he was seeing into my soul. "Crying shows weakness, and I'm not weak," I told him, swallowing hard. "Sometimes crying is the strongest thing you can do. It just shows everyone else that you're just as human as they are." And right then and there I started sobbing. I had lost all control of my emotions, I cried like I hadn't since I was little. All those times I didn't cry when I wanted to poured out now. The walls I spent so long building to make them unbreakable, broke. Alana finds a thick orange envelope in her mailbox one day. No return address, no stamp or postage mark and it's not even addressed to her. Someone had just dropped the letter off in her mailbox. The only thing written on this envelope is "You might need this... or not." Alana takes it inside and begins to read the life story of a complete stranger. The life story of someone trying to find their place in this big scary world. © Somethingtrue 2013. All rights reserved.

"Hello?" "Um, hey?" "Wait, you don't sound like my Aunt Kathy." "Unless I was miraculously converted into a member of the opposite gender and somehow related to whoever is on the other side of this call, then yeah. I'm not your Aunt Kathy." "Oh, shiitake mushrooms." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Short Story #1 (19/04/18) 2016 Fiction Awards Finalist © 2015 evethespy. All Rights Reserved.

It all started with an accidental meeting in a coffee shop and a risky bet. Feelings carried it on from that fateful opportunity. And sometimes, you can't control your feelings. Join Kennedy and Carter as they learn to let go of pride, heal from the hurt, and ultimately, explore the exciting ups and downs of falling in love.

"Love is..." I explored my brain to find the most suitable word in my dictionary that could fit in the definition I was trying to say; the definition that could make the jerk, sitting opposite me with a smirk on his face, believe in 'love'. "Bullshit?" He offered with a huge arrogant smirk on his face and no matter how much I agreed with him on this particular matter, I couldn't agree. So, instead of nodding my head in agreement, I scowled at him. His smirk grew bigger and he leaned away from me, gazing at me with his piercing grey eyes. "Finding it hard to make me believe in love when you yourself don't believe in that shit, huh?" With his piercing grey gaze fixed on my every move, I realized that 'being the devil's cupid' was going to be a lot tougher than I had initially thought. (By the author of 'And We Meet Again')

When the quiet girl in Clayton Hugh's chemistry class comes knocking on his door at five in the morning barely covered up in her little pajamas, inattentive, and drooling like crazy, he has no choice but to take her inside. But once Lucy Walker wakes up inside a room she has never seen before wearing an over-sized t-shirt and gym shorts, you can imagine the pure panic setting in her. The subtle addition of Clayton entering the room shirtless doesn't help much either. After three years of fawning over him, leave it up to her sleepwalking to finally get Clayton Hugh to notice her.

* 4 Sample Chapters * Inquisitive heir, Charlie Fine's obsession with the truth makes him an excellent fraud investigator, but there's one mystery he's never been able to solve: the identity of the girl who gave him the greatest kiss of his life during a high school game of 7 Minutes In Heaven. Twenty years of experiments attempting to recreate the chemistry of that kiss have gotten him nowhere but frustrated and he's about to resign himself to a life without relationship fireworks when an invitation to his high school reunion steels his resolve to get answers once and for all. Accompanied by his binge-drinking best buddy, Martin, he heads home to grill his lovely suspects only to find his skills better put to use in solving the disappearance of an old friend's father and the sabotaging of a maple farm. Thwarted by a shady detective, distracted by a former classmate's troubled sister, will Charlie be able to find out who done it and who done it best? Will the same suspect hold the answers to both mysteries and will her identity be that of the dream girl he let get away? Who kissed Charlie Fine? You could skip to the end, but you'd miss more bear attacks, booby traps, pickled cabbage, flying cardboard, dry lightning, ghost parrots, creepy crawlers, maple syrup and tea cozies than in any cozy mystery about smooching you've ever read! Please know this story contains mild cursing and three F bombs - one of which is totally necessary. *Cover art uses "On-De-Fence" by Gil Elvgren which is to the best of my knowledge in the public domain. *No part of this story may be reproduced or used in any manner without express written permission by the author. © All Rights Reserved