Short Story, Theme Prompt

Like Sugar In Rain

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Written for Violet’s Challenge where she has
asked us to include the following quote into
our writing: “One must be very sure of the
bank before one opens an account.”
Here’s my response to the challenge.

Image by Me & Copilot

“One must be very sure of the bank before one opens an account.”

I should have known better. Three years of slammed doors and shattered glasses, of apologies that meant nothing by morning and promises that dissolved like sugar in rain. We were the couple that made dinner parties uncomfortable, the ones friends stopped inviting because nobody wanted to referee another screaming match over who said what at whose birthday party. My mother stopped asking about her. Her sister stopped asking about me. We’d burned through therapists like kindling; two quit on us, one suggested we were “incompatible at a fundamental level”, which was the politest way anyone had ever told us we were toxic together.

But there were good days too, or at least I told myself there were. Mornings when she’d make coffee the way I liked it, afternoons when we’d laugh about something stupid and I’d remember why I’d fallen for her in the first place. I kept thinking if we could just get past this fight, this rough patch, this impossible month, we’d find our way back to those moments. I was an optimist in a burning building, convinced the smoke would clear. Yeah, call me a freakin’ Pollyanna, I was still willing to try to work through it.

Then she did the unforgivable.

NAR©2025

This is “House of Blues” by Gregg Allman

Fault Lines

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