Short Stories

(Un)Requited Love

Posted on: 2 March 2026

Their eyes met across a crowded room. Except it wasn’t that crowded and she convinced herself that the searching look he gave her was more likely to be assessing her bank balance than looking into her soul. Her stomach flipped; it could have been hunger. He seemed familiar and she checked with the barman that he wasn’t a minor celebrity she should know. He wasn’t. 

It meant nothing, this imagined connection.

She carried the tray of drinks to the table, to the people who had rescued her from a past littered with broken relationships. Her family who had saved her from loving too intensely, feeling too deeply, giving too much. Boredom and vague contentment were easier to live with than passion and desolation. She prided herself on her stable marriage, her capable husband and their self-sufficient children.

Another day she returned to the bar alone, they spoke. She was afraid. She held back, not daring to believe that her feelings could be reciprocated. There followed meetings, brief liaisons, hurried phone calls, texts written, deleted, rewritten. They skirted round each other. Safer to live in lonesome agony than to risk hurting others, hurting him, hurting herself. 

He moved away. Separated by distance, time healed and feelings faded. Life continued. 

Until fate intervened and their eyes met once again, across a crowded room. 

They looked away simultaneously. Her stomach contracted with excitement and fear. She acknowledged him. He smiled. She watched him disentangle himself from those around him. Emboldened, she made unheard excuses. Slowly they moved towards each other.