The Words We Learn to Say

Some words are easy to say. The important ones rarely are.Ten contemporary romance stories explore what happens when people finally say the things they have been avoiding, rehearsing, editing, or hoping someone else will say first.A radio host spends every night reading strangers' confessions while struggling to speak honestly in her own life. A woman confronts the man she abandoned ten years earlier with an apology he has no obligation to accept. Two people who have built an almost-relationship through text messages lose their signal and discover how different honesty feels when it has to be spoken aloud. A newly divorced woman asks for nothing more than one night, only to discover an unexpected kind of intimacy in being asked what she truly wants.Elsewhere, an engagement party brings an old confession back to the surface, two strangers trade secrets thousands of feet above the Atlantic, a long-term couple finally asks the question they have both avoided, and one simple word, "Stay," changes the terms of a relationship that never had any.The Words We Learn to Say is a warm, intimate collection about love, boundaries, desire, second chances, and the courage it takes to ask, answer, apologize, refuse, confess, and begin again.Ten stories. Ten conversations that can no longer be avoided.