Hank

Hank's inadequacies were largely imagined: he had graduated at the top of his class and was rapidly climbing the corporate ladder. Still, his zeigarnik accosted him at least once a day--transporting him back to a time years earlier when his nervous fingers had marred his first piano performance. While his parents had long forgotten the error--if they had even noticed it initially, George would never forgive himself for disrespecting Bach.

Gloria

...

Strange, then, that she grew suddenly more confident and sure-footed as she stepped over that intangible boundary in the night, a simple step taking her from reality to dream -- one simple step shifting one into the other. In this new state, she still resisted the rising sun progressing the gradient past her eyelids from dusky grey to something markedly warmer. She still unsuccessfully struggled against the barrage of tasks and responsibilities awaiting her in the dawn. The idyllic silence of slumber was slipping away and she could resist it no longer.

She began her waking sequence, arching her back into the warm, hard body encircling her small frame. A hardness responded in kind, answering the request with a firm "yes". Perhaps there could be a few moments spared before reality -- if that was truly what this was -- crashed in. Her stretch slid into gyrations and she slid her arm down ever further to investigate what needed no further confirmation.

Francis

His entrance à cheval suggested a certain familiarity with romance novels. Had he also donned a blonde wig and clutched a tub of butter-alternative, his beloved would have likely fled his overzealousness; but today love drew her forward.

Twelve suns would rise and fall before the mounted hopeless romantic would learn that his equine companion had, in that moment, usurped the heart of the only woman he would ever love.

Eleanor

Her soiled spoon rattles against ceramic emptiness. She mourns the loss of flavor the same way she will mourn him two days later when she allows herself to accept that he's gone.

She twirls her finger through the remnants of the meal and licks her finger clean in hopes that stimulating her tastebuds will numb her sense of shame. Shame for allowing herself to succumb to his charms, shame for accepting less than her due, shame for tolerating behavior she wouldn't have accepted from her teenage son. 

But all she can taste is his memory.

He isn't right for her; never was. Contrary to her own good sense, she'd put off clipping his vine -- instead inviting him to envelop her and blot out her sunlight. Carnal hungers sated, she slipped into a world where her needs outside the bedroom were irrelevant.

She had broken the one rule of one-night stands. But something about the way his fingers brushed against her neck made her dream of more. She told herself that she didn't mind his intrusion, but in chasing this one dream she had removed the possibility of any other.

She grabs a bottle of red wine, fills a glass halfway, and tries to see something other than emptiness.

Doug

Twenty minutes into the exam, nature was screaming into Doug's face. A childhood full of terrestrial ferries between the pond in his backyard to the Great Lakes in his grandparents' had developed his ability to endure eight-hour stints between trickling streams, but the waterfall of caffeinated drinks from the previous night's cram session (not to mention the Writer's soppy sponge of metaphors) had stripped him of all restraint. The professor's irrefrangible policy against any interruption of testing sessions must be violated, else Noah's ark need be summoned to save the devout from the amber deluge.

Callie

Her soiled spoon rattles against ceramic emptiness. She mourns the loss of flavor the same way she will mourn him two days later when she allows herself to accept that he's gone.
She twirls her finger through the remnants of the meal and licks her finger clean in hopes that stimulating her tastebuds will numb her sense of shame. Shame for allowing herself to succumb to his charms, shame for accepting less than her due, shame for tolerating behavior she wouldn't have accepted from her teenage son. 
But all she can taste is his memory.
He isn't right for her; never was. Contrary to her own good sense, she'd put off clipping his vine -- instead inviting him to envelop her and blot out her sunlight. Carnal hungers sated, she slipped into a world where her needs outside the bedroom were irrelevant.
She had broken the one rule of one-night stands. But something about the way his fingers brushed against her neck made her dream of more. She told herself that she didn't mind his intrusion, but in chasing this one dream she had removed the possibility of any other.

She grabs a bottle of red wine, fills a glass halfway, and tries to see something other than emptiness.

Byron

He thought that a paper crane would probably be a nice gift, if just because he could fake some deep feeling and make an experience out of the gift giving. "The crane is significant because..." he would explain, the words elevating his reputation with the recipient. The return on investment was dazzling: a mere three-dollars-worth of origami paper and about ten minutes of executing Googled folding instructions and voila!

Fake affection if you really feel it's a good idea.

Alex

She'd built up this idealized expectation, this idea that dramatic moments in life grew into the same opuses that they did in films. So it is regrettable, then, that her attempt to create a poignant visual "moment" fell flat without the requisite filmmaker's entourage. Sally's scene, as it were (within her head), saw her taking up scissors in a shaky hand and taking bold strokes with the least possible boldness. Her hand wavered and carefully cut her hair -- its color unimportant -- at the same length, best she could tell.