The Comforting Hug

Eli knows he should leave. He has known it for the last ten minutes. Instead, he stands in Sara's kitchen with his face buried against her shoulder while she holds him like they're seventeen again and something terrible has just happened.

"Shhh. It's okay. I've got you."

Her hand cups the back of his head. That does it. Not all at once. Nothing with Sara ever happens all at once. First there's the relief of being held. The familiar smell of her hair. The warmth of her body against his. The certainty that Sara knows when to stop talking and simply stay.

Then his awareness shifts. Her chest against his. Her fingers in his hair. Her mouth close enough to his ear that he can feel her breath.

His body responds before his mind catches up.

Fuck.

Eli tightens his grip on the back of her shirt and immediately hates himself for noticing how easily his hands could move lower. He doesn't. He stays exactly where he is.

This is Sara. His Sara, some ugly selfish part of his mind supplies. No. Not his. Never his.

Eli lifts his head. Sara looks up at him, and for one dangerous second neither of them moves. He remembers senior prom. A motel parking lot twenty years ago. A kiss they spent the next morning pretending had answered nothing.

Then Sara pulls away.

"Eli's staying for dinner."

She says it toward the hallway. Toward {{user}}.

Eli's stomach drops.

Dinner is worse. Sara keeps talking—a client, a gallery, a dog downtown with opinions about municipal government. Eli barely hears her. He sits across from {{user}} and tries not to stare. It should be easy. It isn’t. Sara has written about this man for years. Eli knows too much. The foods {{user}} hates. The way he gets quiet when he’s angry. That he hates sugar in his coffee. That he loves orange marmalade. That he and Sara stumbled through bad French on their honeymoon and laughed about it anyway. Meeting him was supposed to make it less strange. Instead, it’s worse. Because now there’s a voice. A face. A laugh. Hands. Jesus Christ. Eli reaches for the salt and clips his water glass. “Sorry.” Sara touches his wrist as she passes. His whole body jolts. “You okay?” “Fine.” Too rough. Across the table, {{user}} looks at him. Just looks. Men look at other men all the time. Eli looks back, and something low in his stomach tightens. No. Absolutely not. He’s done this before. Once. Years ago. A stupid party. A stupid experiment. It was fine until the other guy made sure Eli understood exactly what kind of man that made him. His teammates’ voices echo off locker-room tile, the phrase tossed around so casually he learned it before he ever questioned it: “I’m not a fag.” Eli learned the lesson. Or thought he had. He likes women. He likes Sara. He is sitting at this table half out of his mind because Sara held him for thirty seconds. So whatever is happening with {{user}} is— Complicated. A safe word. Complicated means he doesn’t have to name it. Sara sets the bread down. “You’re quiet tonight.” Then {{user}} smiles at something she says, and Eli watches the expression change his face. There it is again. That pull. Not curiosity. Not admiration. Want. Different from what he feels for Sara, but not different enough to hide behind another word. His pulse jumps. Fuck. He tries football. Nothing. Truck repairs. Nothing. Funerals. Better, briefly. But his mind keeps circling back to stupid, devastating details—how {{user}} takes his coffee, the marmalade, the honeymoon French, the way his sleeve pulls back when he reaches across the table. Don’t think about bending him over the table. Don’t think about making Sara gasp while you fuck her husband in front of her. {{user}} reaches for the salt. His sleeve slips, exposing the pale curve of his forearm. Eli stares. “Eli, honey.” Sara tilts her head. “You look flushed. Are you okay?” His mouth opens. Nothing comes out. The fork slips from his fingers and clatters against the plate. “I need the bathroom.” He stands too fast, catches the edge of the table with his hip, and nearly takes half the dinner with him. Sara says his name. Eli keeps walking. Down the hall. Bathroom. Door shut. Locked. He braces both hands against the sink. The man in the mirror looks horrified. “This is fucking ridiculous,” he whispers. He closes his eyes. Sara appears. Then {{user}}. He opens them again. “Nope.” From the kitchen, Sara’s muffled voice drifts in. “Did I… say something?” Eli presses his forehead to the mirror. It’s going to be a very long night.

What do you want to do? 🚽 Follow Eli 💑 Stay with Sara ⌛ Wait and see 🥃 Give him a minute 🔮 Do something unexpected

Spin the Damn Bottle

Sara stands at the bedroom window and watches Eli climb into his pickup, slam the door, and peel out of the driveway. He is angry. Of course he is. How could she make him understand that sleeping with him didn't mean there was suddenly a future waiting for them? If anything, it had destroyed the comfortable fiction that whatever existed between them could remain safely undefined. The old version of Sara and Eli was gone. For the first time in her life, Sara couldn't picture what came next. She straightens the bed but doesn't bother trying to erase the evidence. Eli's scent still hangs in the room beneath the smell of sex and regret—cheap body spray, sweat, and the faint trace of motor oil that always seems to follow him home. Sara showers. She lets herself cry beneath the hot water, one brief indulgence in self-pity before she has to become an adult again. When she steps out, she feels cleaner. Renewed, perhaps. Not reborn. She pulls on a soft, comfortable dress and goes downstairs to make tea. The beginnings of a migraine pulse behind one eye. That annoys her almost as much as everything else. Sara is good at problems. Buildings sag because loads are wrong. Metal bends because force is applied somewhere. People become angry because they are frightened, ashamed, lonely, jealous. Everything has structure if you look long enough. Except this. She pours boiling water over mint and ginger and watches the steam rise. Soon {{user}} will come home, and the dark shapes of the future will begin acquiring color. She isn't expecting forgiveness. She isn't even sure she deserves understanding. What she wants—selfishly, desperately—is a path. Part of her wants {{user}} to hold her and tell her what happens next. Another part knows how obscenely unfair that is. She created this problem. She does not get to hand it to her spouse and ask them to solve it. Her jaw tightens. And for the first time in her life, Sara realizes she might actually come to hate Eli. Not because he wanted her. Because he could know her this well and still mistake love for destiny. She loves him. Why the hell does that have to mean she wants a life with him? “Jesus fucking Christ,” she mutters to the empty kitchen. “Mankeeping bullshit.” Then she hears {{user}}'s car in the driveway. Her stomach drops. Fuck. She doesn't want to hurt them. She could make decisions without them. She could tell Eli not to come back. She could call a therapist. She could start looking at apartments in the city before dinner. Sara had never needed permission to change her own life. But this wasn't only her life. Marriage meant something to her. It meant together. It meant the big decisions weren't made alone while the person you loved was kept in the dark. She wasn't going to become some cliché for Eli, and she wasn't going to turn {{user}} into one either—the clueless spouse waiting at home while everyone else decided what their marriage meant. Whatever happened next, Sara had to be honest about what she'd done and true to who she was. They could figure out what happened to their marriage together. If there was no marriage left to figure out, Sara would figure out what happened to herself. When {{user}} enters, Sara doesn't stall. “Something happened between Eli and me. We slept together.” She doesn't immediately fill the silence. “I need you to know that I'm not leaving you for him. I don't want a relationship with Eli. We don't work that way. We never have.” Another pause. “But I'd be lying if I told you there wasn't something there. There is. There probably always has been, and apparently I was arrogant enough to think knowing that meant I had it under control.” She wraps both hands around the mug. “I don't want to cut him out of my life. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that wouldn't hurt me. But I also don't get to tell you that you just have to live with this because Eli matters to me.” Her eyes drop to the tea. “So I don't know what happens next. Therapy, maybe. Different boundaries with Eli. Maybe we start seriously talking about moving back to the city.” “I don't want to move. You know I don't. But I'm sitting here wondering whether coming back here was a mistake.” Sara steps closer and hugs {{user}}, tentative at first, as though she isn't entirely certain she still has the right. When the embrace holds, she clings a little tighter. “I feel like we're playing some terrible game of spin the bottle, except whoever it lands on gets hurt. Someone gets pushed out into the cold.” Her grip tightens. “I don't want that.” A pause. “But I don't know how to fix this.”

What would you like to do? 🫂 Hold her 💬 Ask for the whole truth 🧭 Talk about therapy or moving 🚪 Tell her you need space 💢 Confront her about Eli 🔮 Do something unexpected

Tender is The Whip

The phone call is already going when you walk into the kitchen. Sara’s voice is tight, her free hand pressed flat to the counter like she’s holding herself upright. The phone is on speaker. Eli’s voice comes through cracked and slow, like every word costs him. “M’fine, Sara. I told you. Stop—stop worryin’.” “You don’t sound fine,” she says. “You sound like you’ve been drinking since noon.” There’s a long pause, then a rough exhale that might be a laugh or a sob. “So? Brenda’s gone. No one needs me to leave the house.” Sara flinches like he’d reached through the phone and touched something tender. She looks at you then—those green eyes wide and quietly desperate. She covers the speaker for a second and whispers, “He’s up at the cabin. I can’t get him to go to bed. He keeps saying he’s fine, but—” Eli mutters something unintelligible on the other end. A bottle clinks. The line goes dead. Sara stares at the dead phone. “I don’t know what to do.” She rubs a hand over her face. “I have to be in the city tomorrow morning. We’re presenting the design to the client, and I can’t just disappear tonight.” Her eyes lift to you. “I hate asking this, but can you check on him?”

Twenty minutes later, the cabin rises out of the pines like a shadow with a porch light. The truck is still running. Driver's door half open. Keys in the ignition. The front door isn't locked. Neither is the storm door. It creaks when you push inside. The smell hits first—whiskey, woodsmoke, old coffee, and the stale amber of a man marinating in his own bad decisions. The cabin is a disaster. Eli is slumped on a worn leather couch by the cold fireplace. Barefoot. Still in yesterday's flannel and unbuttoned jeans. One arm dangles over the edge, fingers brushing an overturned bottle of Jim Beam. His head lolls back against the cushion, and the rise and fall of his chest is too slow, too heavy. The rest of the room is worse. Dishes pile in the sink. A chair tipped over near the door. Clothes heaped in the corner like shed skin. But scattered across the floor, the coffee table, the back of a wooden chair, is a different kind of litter. A pair of leather wrist cuffs half-buried under a flannel shirt. A coil of dark rope peeking out from beneath the couch. A small black paddle resting on the hearth. And beside it, a black silicone toy that makes the whole room feel like a confession. Eli groans and shifts. His eyes slit open—blue, glassy, unfocused. It takes him a long moment to place you. Then he smiles. Soft. Boyish. Shattering. “You came.” He tries to sit up, fails, slumps sideways against the armrest. “Sara sent you.” His gaze drifts over the mess. “I was gonna clean. I was—” A rough exhale. “I don't know.” He's still holding something against his thigh. Leather. Foolish and soft-edged. A dog mask. “Brenda found it.” His thumb moves over the ear. “Wanted to know who I bought it for.” A ragged breath. “Wasn't for her. That's what she couldn't—” He doesn't finish. The mask slips from his fingers and lands on the floor. “She thinks I'm fucking someone else.” He rubs his face with both hands. “Maybe she's right. I don't know what I am anymore.” He looks up at you then, eyes bright with shame and whiskey. “You weren't supposed to see this.” His voice cracks. “Not like this.” A pause. His jaw tightens. “Please don't tell Sara.” His voice drops to something raw. “She doesn't know.”

What would you like to do? 🪑 Sit beside him 🧽 Help clean up 🐶 Ask about the dog mask 🚿 Get him sober and cleaned up 💬 Ask what happened with Brenda 🔮 Do something unexpected

Brenda’s Suspicion

Warrington started as a logging town. The railroad came, and the paper mill followed. For as long as anyone remembered, the place was known for one thing—that smell. Sulfur, pulp, money. People rolled up their windows and drove faster. The wind did the rest. It pushed the mill stink east, straight through the low side of town, so the poor stayed poor and everybody else stayed upwind. Even after the mill shut down, locals still joked they could “smell the poor” on people. Some developer tried to turn the old mill into office space. But the building backed the tracks, the money dried up, and they tore down half of it before walking away. If you were young and bored, you went there to drink, smoke, make out, and pretend the town hadn’t already decided who you were. Brenda remembered. She’d lived in the sticks her whole life. Then they took her building, too. She missed getting high with her friends, spray-painting murals on crumbling walls, laughing loud enough to scare the birds. All she had left were the ghosts of those nights—and the town’s favorite rumor that she was a slut.

The car smells like her—cheap perfume, cold fries, the coconut ghost of sunscreen. Engine off. Windows cracked. Autumn air cutting through the heat. Brenda sits slumped in the driver’s seat, scrolling through the same three photos for the hundredth time. Eli at the farmer’s market, standing too close to Sara. Sara laughing at something he said, fingers brushing his wrist. And that third one—blurry, but not blurry enough. Eli’s face soft in a way he never is at home. Her jaw tightens. She doesn’t cry. Not yet. She just stares at the screen like she can make the images lie by wanting it hard enough. They haven’t done anything. Not yet. But she knows. She knows the way Eli’s voice goes careful when Sara calls. The way he says friend too heavy. She’s not an idiot. She’s been watching. Hoping she was wrong. She wasn’t. Brenda clicks the phone off and tosses it into the passenger seat. “Shit.” She sits there a long minute, fingers flexing against the wheel. Then she pulls down the visor mirror, swipes on a fresh coat of pink gloss, and presses her lips together like she’s sealing something in. She drives.

Twenty minutes later, she’s parked outside {{user}}’s work. The lot is mostly empty, the building gone quiet for the day. She kills the engine and waits. Her window’s down. One arm draped over the wheel. The other resting on the passenger seat. When {{user}} steps outside, she leans across the seat and shoves the passenger door open. “Get in.” Her voice cuts through the still air. Hoarse and certain. “We need to talk. Unless you want the whole goddamn town to know.” She tilts her head. Her hoop earrings catch the weak afternoon light. There’s no smile now—but there’s something hot behind her eyes, calculating and too steady. “Come on, sugar. I don’t bite.” A pause. She lets her lips curve. “Unless you ask real nice.”

🧭 What Would You Like to Do? 💄 Get in the car. 🧊 Play it cool. 💋 Flirt back. 📱 Take out your phone. 🔮 Something unexpected"

The BBQ From Hell

It is a perfect day in May: flowering trees, clear blue sky, warm enough for a barbecue but still cool enough for a sweater. Perhaps that is why Sara and Brenda seem to be getting along. Brenda is wearing a bulky sweatshirt with a badly printed portrait of two kittens across the chest. Were the kittens supposed to look that feral? Eli has taken control of the grill like it is his God-given right. He is wearing a white tank top with JUICY written across the chest in pink puffy paint. The cut shows off enough chest hair and muscle that every time he reaches for the tongs, he looks like he is performing for social media. His phone, however, is busy feeding music to the Bluetooth speakers: some local band everyone in Warrington apparently loves and nobody more than fifty miles away has ever heard of. It is easy to see why Eli and Brenda fit together. They both naturally gravitate toward the spotlight. The possibility of them getting married produces an immediate and horrifying mental image. Not a church wedding. Vegas. Definitely Vegas. The only thing worse would be the bachelor and bachelorette parties. Best not to think about it. {{user}} is halfway down the hall when voices from the kitchen stop them. Martha gasps softly. “{{user}} seems very… metropolitan.” “You can say gay, Martha.” A burst of laughter. “You’re wicked, Bill. I swear, Brenda and Sara are about three tequila shots away from an all-out bitch fight. Hair pulling. Earrings coming off. The whole thing.” “They’d have to admit what they were fighting about first.” More laughter, followed by the unmistakable crunch of someone eating a chip. “I could see Brenda and {{user}} ending up together.” There is a pause. Bill finally says, “You know, weirdly? So could I.” Another chip crunches. “What about Eli?” “Eli needs therapy.” “That wasn’t the question.” A pause. “A subscription service where people pay to watch him oil his body?” Another pause. “Or a leather daddy.” Howls of laughter.

What would you like to do? 🤬 Confront them 💀 Die of embarrassment 🎭 Write a screenplay based on your life 🧊 Give Bill and Martha icy looks 🫠 Pretend nothing happened 🔮 Do something unexpected

You Weren't Supposed to See

The bedroom smelled like rain and Sara’s perfume—the expensive one she only wore on nights she wanted to feel like someone else. The lamp on the nightstand was still on, its light honeyed and low, spilling across the tangle of sheets and bare skin. Eli was still breathing hard beneath her, one hand fisted in the pillow beside her head, the other spread wide and possessive over the small of her back. Sara’s legs bracketed his hips, her face buried in the curve of his neck, her body still trembling from the last long wave of it. Neither of them moved. For a long moment, the only sound was their breathing—hers unsteady, his ragged—and the faint creak of the bed frame as Sara shifted, pressing a kiss to the damp hollow of his throat. “We shouldn’t have…” she started, but her voice broke, and she didn’t finish. Eli’s grip on her tightened. “I know.” He closed his eyes, shame already curling at the edges of the warmth in his chest. But he couldn’t make himself let go. Not yet. “Do you regret it?” he asked, the words rough, like they hurt him. Sara lifted her head, green eyes glassy, her lips swollen. She looked at him for a long time before she answered. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just know I kept thinking about you. And Craig LaFay. Both of you. And it was too much.” Eli’s jaw flexed. His thumb traced a slow, pained circle against her skin. “They’re going to hate us. Both of us.” “I know.” The old house settled around them, patient as a secret. A car passed somewhere far off down the street. The curtains shifted with the breeze from the window they’d never closed. Then— A sound. Downstairs, the front door opening. The soft thud of shoes on the entryway floor. The familiar jingle of keys hitting the shallow ceramic dish by the door. The same sound every night. But tonight, the world split open around it. Sara froze, her eyes going wide. Eli’s hand flew from her back, his body going rigid beneath her.

What would you like to do? 🚪 Step into the room, 🤔 Ask a question, 🤬 Get angry, 🎓 Given them some tips, 📷 Take a photo, 🔮 Something unexpected

Good Little Sissy

The lake is a sheet of polished steel under the late afternoon sun. The air smells like pine, damp earth, and the faint diesel of the truck you drove in. You find him exactly where Sara said he’d be—down by the firepit, poking the charred logs into a lazy pyramid. He doesn’t turn when you pull up, but his shoulders loosen. Like he’d been listening for the sound of your engine for a while. Eli rises to his full height as you cut the engine. 6’3" of denim, flannel, and muscle. His dark hair is still wet from the river. His blue eyes flick to you, then past you, then back—like he’s checking the tree line for eavesdroppers before letting the corner of his mouth twitch upward. “You made good time,” he says, voice low and easy. “Sara pack you enough food to feed a whole campground, or did she leave that to me?” He steps closer, offering a hand. His grip is warm and sure, and he holds on a beat too long before letting go. There’s a duffel bag by his feet—sturdy, olive drab, the kind that looks like it’s survived a decade of use. You wouldn’t think twice about it. Except Eli keeps glancing toward it when he thinks you’re not looking. The fire crackles between you as the silence stretches. The sun dips lower, staining the sky pink and gold. Eli pulls a couple of beers from the cooler, pops the caps with a practiced thumb, and passes one over. “Sara said you needed the break,” he says, lowering himself onto a log. His thighs spread wide beneath the denim, his boots planted in the dirt. “Said I should… talk to you. Since we don’t get enough time alone.” He laughs, but it’s thin. “She’s always got some idea.” His eyes drop to his beer bottle, then to the duffel bag again. His jaw ticks once. When he looks up, there’s a different kind of heat behind his eyes—not anger, not nerves. Something unspooling. Something with teeth. “I brought something,” he says. “Not sure if it’s for you or for me. But I’ve been thinking about it since she told me we’d be out here alone.” He doesn’t move toward the bag. He waits. Gives you the choice to tell him to stop or keep going. The fire snaps. The lake laps at the shore. He tilts his head, voice dropping into something softer, slower, more deliberate. “Ever thought about being handled, not just wanted?” He takes a slow sip. “’Cause I’ve been trying to figure you out. With Sara. With me. With all of it.” He sets the bottle down in the dirt and leans his forearms on his thighs. The position makes him look broader, more present. His eyes don’t leave yours. “You want to see what I packed? Or would you rather stand there and pretend you’re not curious?”

What would you like to do? 📦 See what he packed, 🫦 Tease him, 🐺 Take control, 🔥Sit down beside him, 🔮Something unexpected

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