romance

"Estelle, no! It's not what you think!" The handsome man cries out to the busty nurse. He reaches for her as she quickly heads out the door. She's carrying a…

I'm barely able to concentrate at work. My mind can't stop replaying what happened last night over and over. That can't be right. That isn't what happened. I misinterpreted something.…

"Come on, ya hunk of junk!" Marq murmured while trying to get the web page to load. I don't think it's his computer that's the issue. I tried to pull…

The comic shop was packed. Well, packed compared to the normal number of customers. About 8 people sat in chairs, drinking the soda provided by Michael. I twirled a pencil…

The voting period had begun, and I only had a few more days to try and squeeze some votes out of this. Tobias hadn’t mentioned me again, but he did bring up two more relatively unknown artists. Apparently, he’s really particular about how he wins contests. An unexpected effect of this is I now judged my self-worth by how my entry was doing compared to those two.

\"I don’t react to this though. I’m still too focused on the rising number on my profile. I have an audience now. There are going to be people looking at my art just because a stupid, haughty, well dressed stranger told them to. That’s pressure I don’t need.\"

\"He pulls out a large binder, filled with plastic protected sheets. The book flops open and the images spill into my mind. The figures within remind me of Renaissance marble statues captured on a page, with hyper realistic anatomy articulating each sinewy muscle.\"

Before I can respond, the bell at the front door jingles. The man from the other days enters. His clothes were different but still as fancy as ever. It\'s difficult to put into words how it made me feel. Small? Insignificant? Like a gross little comic goblin?

Five minutes. Just five more minutes to wait. The preliminary results will be announced, and we’ll know who has moved on to the next part of the competition. My leg can’t seem to stop bouncing up and down.

Michael had talked me into showing him the submissions I drew for the contest, by bringing them up on his computer. Now he was critiquing them. He wasn\'t being mean or anything, but I feel like whatever flirting I may or may not have read into his actions was a lie.