Inara never would have made the bet if she hadn't been so completely sure of winning.
What a cliche, she thought to herself making her way up the white pebbled path to pay her forfeit. No doubt that was the first thought of every fool who lost a bet.
Thinking back, she realized that she'd let herself be spurred on by the crowd—that and her own foolish pride. It was so out of character for her, so why did she do it?
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I was determined to make it the best summer of my life.
I'd graduated college the first week of May and immediately received an offer for a dream job in San Diego. It meant moving clear across the nation, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
The job started in September, so I had several months on my hands. I'd be working fifty hours a week come autumn and probably for some years after, so I decided a prolonged vacation was in order and had just the place in mind.
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Mark found himself pleasantly surprised by the book in his hands. Though he was a writer of science fiction, he wasn't much of a reader of it. He was on his way to his first science fiction convention to be part of a panel for new writers, a Q and A session about a defunct TV series he'd been a writer for, and he had one autograph session set up. He knew he was just a minor guest, and was reading up on the other authors he'd be sharing the panel with.
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She had come out of the fortune-tellers a changed woman. Pausing only briefly at the entrance, she looked around her for a moment and walked briskly to the train station. She stood in the throng of the station concourse, examining the departures before walking into the ticket office. The train she chose was leaving in only a few minutes, leaving her no time to sit around and ponder what on earth she was doing.
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Roxanne Tate slid behind the wheel of her new, white, Cadillac Seville. That was one nice thing about living with Ted. He was not stingy. And he liked to not only fuck, but to please her as well. He didn't mind the games she liked to play. She didn't have to work now, but she enjoyed being a nurse. Besides, working for a gynecologist gave her the opportunity of meeting interesting women.
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Shirley was a call girl. I was head of security in the high rise luxury apartment complex where she lived. I originally got my job after I was assigned by the security company I worked for to rid the place of hookers that they had failed to screen out. The primary means of getting them out was to force an incident with either the hookers or their pimps that would then justify eviction. I cleaned the place out in six months and the management offered me a permanent job with them as their head of security. Not only was it more money but it included a free 2 bedroom apartment.
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I struggled to hear the connected tone as I held the phone away from my dripping hair, water running down the nape of my neck and those few drops running over my forehead that had been missed by the wrapped towel, you picked up.
"Hello you," I said as I heard your standard phone greeting, smiling at myself as I heard the tone in your voice change and that smile break before you replied.
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I was relieved when the flight attendants finally opened the doors, allowing the passengers to disembark from the plane. The flight itself hadn't been too bad, but I was tired of sitting in one spot for so long and the prospect of being able to stretch my legs had me antsy. Grabbing my backpack from the overhead bin, I began shuffling forward.
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I couldn't complain about the view, that was for sure.
Maggie and I sat hip-to-hip on a fleece jacket we'd spread on the ground to protect us from the tickly grass. It was June, and the groundskeepers apparently hadn't concerned themselves with mowing the grass around the field lately. I was in shorts and she was in a skirt, and we'd been going batty with the itching of the grass until Maggie had dug the fleece out of Max's gym bag.
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Stephanie sat alone in her home enjoying a relaxing day of nothingness. She had done her housework for the day and had nothing to do over the weekend. Plans could be easily made, but could they compare a lazy day of sitting around her cozy apartment sans clothes? The ability to lounge around in the nude had to be high up on the list of reasons to live alone.
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