NYC Midnight 2026 Round 1: "Untidy Me"

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I'm doing the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge again this year, and I just made it through to the second round!

For those unfamiliar with the contest, it works like this: you get assigned a genre, a subject and a character, then you have a limited number of days to go away and write a short story featuring all of those elements. In the first round, which started in January, there were 5,004 writers participating in 178 groups, with approximately 28 writers per group.

I had a VERY friendly genre assignment for this opener – romance – which is the first time I've ever got a genre I actually write in this competition.

The subject of the story had to be comfort zone(s), and it had to feature a character who was a job applicant. After the assignments were released, I had only 8 days to write the story, with a maximum length of 2,000 words.

I managed to place 5th in my group, just squeaking through to round 2. That round has actually already taken place, and my next story has already been submitted (there's an embargo on publishing your entries until 10 days after the results are announced, and that only happened on 8th April). I'll share that with you once I'm allowed, but in the meantime, here is my weird little romance for you.

I hope you enjoy the story!

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Untidy Me

by Josie Jaffrey

‘Okay, listen to this one,’ Miri said. ‘HR assistant, decent salary, and it’s only out on the business park.’

Clarissa tried to restrain her irritation as she replied, ‘I told you I don’t want to commute.’

‘A fifteen-minute bus ride is not a commute.’

‘It is the very definition of a commute,’ Clarissa growled. She’d been on the phone to her sister for nearly an hour now, and they’d both had enough of each other.

‘You are so rigid!’ Miri yelled in exasperation. ‘You’ll be unemployed forever if you can’t bend on even one little thing. You know how I got my job? I made like two hundred applications. You won’t even submit two, because nothing meets your standards.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with having standards.’

Clarissa had arranged her life very tidily to meet every single one of hers. She had a neat little bedsit that was close enough to the city centre that she could walk, but not so close that she couldn’t reach the parkland in the opposite direction just as easily. She had a cat to cuddle when she got lonely, old university friends to meet up with a couple of times a year, and online gaming friends enough to fill the gaps. Until last week, she’d also had a job that meant she could afford her bedsit comfortably and work remotely without disrupting her daily routine one bit.

Then she’d got laid off, through no fault of her own, and it was going to fuck up her entire, carefully-constructed life.

‘You’re so scared of change that it’s trapping you in your flat, and it’s so boring,’ Miri moaned. ‘The way I see it, either you get out of your comfort zone, or you get used to sleeping on my sofa, and neither of us wants that.’

Clarissa shuddered at the prospect. ‘Fine,’ she said irritably. ‘You want me to apply for this stupid job?’

‘I want you to try something new,’ Miri said. Then she sighed down the phone and added quietly, ‘But we both know you’re not capable of that.’

Which is how Clarissa found herself waiting at the bus stop in the pissing rain at eight o’clock on a wintery Tuesday morning. She was perfectly capable of commuting to the business park if she bloody well wanted to, whatever Miri thought, and she was going to prove it.

Except, so far, she hadn’t actually managed to board the bus. She’d watched four of them come and go without ever quite convincing herself to step out from underneath the shelter.

‘Are you lost, or waiting for someone to get off?’ a voice asked.

Clarissa turned abruptly and saw a woman standing in the shelter behind her. She was a couple of inches taller than Clarissa, a couple of years older, and there was a line of silver earrings punched through the outer shell of her right ear that said she was about fifty times braver, too. Her dark hair was long and wavy, and shiny enough that Clarissa couldn’t help imagining what it would feel like to stroke.

‘Sorry,’ Clarissa said. ‘Were you talking to me?’

‘Two buses have left in the past minute,’ the woman observed. ‘If you wanted to get on, I’m guessing you would have done it by now.’

Then the woman smiled, and Clarissa’s cheeks began to burn. It wasn’t just any old smile. It put a dimple in one of the woman’s cheeks and lit up her steel-grey eyes with mischief, and both of those things sent Clarissa’s stomach spinning.

‘N–No,’ Clarissa stuttered. ‘I just— The thing is— I’m just going to— Bye.’

Then she ran out into the rain and back to her bedsit before she could make even more of an idiot of herself.

This is why I like routine, she thought frantically as she triple-locked the door behind her. No surprises, no embarrassment, no unplanned encounters with beautiful women at bus stops.

But, Miri’s voice said from the back of her head, not much of a life, either.

The next morning, a message from Miri popped up on Clarissa’s phone.

Are you applying for that job then, or what?

Clarissa messaged back, I’m dry-running the commute today.

She’d given herself a talking-to overnight. Sort of. More accurately, she’d lain awake for hours berating herself for not chatting to Bus-Stop Woman. She would have failed miserably at it, obviously, but she could at least have tried.

Her sister was right: she was scared of change.

She was scared of everything, including her own bisexuality. Clarissa had known she was bi since she was a teenager, but it had quickly become just one more thing that she’d never been brave enough to explore.

A glimmer of an opportunity had been offered yesterday.

She’d been too scared to take it.

Story of her life.

Well, not anymore. She was getting on that bloody bus, and she was doing it today. One small step for Clarissa, one giant leap into future adventurousness.

Only, when Clarissa got to the bus stop, she saw a familiar face coming along the street towards her and had an immediate crisis of confidence. Bus-Stop Woman smiled at Clarissa as she walked past the bus stop, her eyes twinkling and her single dimple dimpling, and said, ‘Hi.’

Clarissa was seized by the inexplicable urge to explain herself. Her hand shot out – apparently of its own volition – and wrapped gently around the woman’s leather-jacket-clad wrist. Words were spilling out of her mouth before she knew what was happening and, once they were out, it was too late to gather them back in.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ Clarissa said in a garbled rush. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just I was worried I wasn’t doing the right thing – I’m always worried about that, really – and I wasn’t expecting some gorgeous stranger to start talking to me in the street and I sort of freaked out and— I’m sorry. I’m rambling.’ Then she realised she was still holding onto the woman’s wrist, and dropped it abruptly. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. God. I’m so embarrassed.’

If Clarissa’s cheeks had been burning yesterday, then today they were on fire.

The woman just carried on smiling. She said, ‘Gorgeous, huh?’ with a self-deprecating chuckle, and Clarissa ran out of words. She gaped like a fish for several long seconds, then the bus arrived, bringing her an escape from this impossibly terrifying – yet impossibly exciting – situation.

‘Sorry,’ Clarissa squeaked, flame-cheeked as she dived for the bus door. ‘Again. This is me, so I’ve just got to— Bye.’

She scrambled onto the bus, fell into a seat just in time for it to start moving, then watched with mixed feelings as Bus-Stop Woman disappeared into the distance.

She’d been so eager to escape one anxiety-inducing thing that she’d jumped right into another without looking, and now here she was, riding the bus, just like she’d always been scared of doing. She was so nervous about missing her stop that she hovered her thumb over the button for the entire journey, but she rode the whole distance between her home and the business park – twice – thus providing proof of concept for her intended commute.

Granted, she’d made a tit of herself with Bus-Stop Woman again, but not quite so much of a tit as last time, and that felt like progress. She couldn’t stop blushing about the encounter for days afterwards, but when she revisited the memory of the woman’s eyes, her smile, her lips, she couldn’t quite be sure if she was flushing with embarrassment, or with exhilaration.

A week later, Clarissa messaged her sister and said, I got an interview.

For the business park job? Miri messaged back.

Yep, Clarissa replied. Tomorrow at 9. Wish me luck.

Good luck! I’m proud of you x

When Clarissa literally bumped into Bus-Stop Woman the next morning, it felt like fate.

‘You again.’ The woman smiled. Steel-grey eyes glinted. Dimple dimpled. The woman’s look was hard, but her demeanour was so soft that it made Clarissa blush again.

‘Do you just hang around here every morning, waiting for me to show up?’ Clarissa asked.

She was flirting. Dear Lord, she was flirting.

‘You’re on my morning commute. I live just up there,’ the woman said, pointing to the flat above a nearby shop, ‘and I park over there.’ She pointed to the next road along. The bus stop was between the two.

‘Oh.’ Now Clarissa felt like an idiot.

The woman said, ‘I’m Emily, by the way.’

Clarissa introduced herself and said, ‘I’m sorry. About… I’m sorry.’

‘You say that a lot,’ Emily laughed.

‘Sorry,’ Clarissa said again. ‘Look, this is going to sound silly, but the thing is that I don’t like taking the bus, and if it wasn’t for you I’m not sure I would have been able to make myself get on it last week, so thank you. For that.’

‘Oh, I totally get it. I don’t like the bus either,’ Emily agreed. ‘Too claustrophobic. Feels like travelling in a cage.’

‘I guess so,’ Clarissa said. She’d never really thought of it like that.

‘Where are you heading?’

‘The business park.’

‘Oh, weird.’ Emily dimpled at her. ‘Me too. Want a lift instead?’

Do not fuck this up!

‘Um. Sure,’ Clarissa agreed giddily.

She wouldn’t have to ride the bus, and she got to spend time with Emily. Saying yes felt like a no-brainer, until Emily led Clarissa into a side street and she saw what they’d be driving.

‘Here we are,’ Emily said. She swung her luscious hair over one shoulder and swung her leg over a low-riding motorcycle.

The sight sent Clarissa’s stomach flipping for two very different reasons.

Was she just imagining the seductive glint in Emily’s eye, or was this delectable biker chick actually flirting back?

‘Um.’ Clarissa swallowed. ‘You ride a bike?’

‘Yeah. Brand loyalty, you know,’ Emily explained. ‘I’m one of their product developers.’

‘For the bike company on the business park?’

‘Yep.’

What were the chances?

‘I’ve got an interview there this afternoon,’ Clarissa confessed.

‘Oh, weird!’ Emily said with a grin, pulling a couple of helmets out of her backpack. ‘Well, it can’t hurt your image to turn up on a company product, right?’

‘No…’ Clarissa eyed the motorbike dubiously.

Except that the idea of riding a motorbike at all was utterly terrifying, and even more so when she wasn’t the one controlling it. The bus was bad enough, but this?

She was going to die. She was actually going to die.

Emily seemed to sense Clarissa’s hesitation. Her grin widened as she offered Clarissa a helmet and said, ‘You can hold on to me as tightly as you like.’

Clarissa wasn’t imagining it. The motorcycle goddess was genuinely flirting with her.

No more missed opportunities.

‘All right,’ Clarissa said, accepting the helmet before she could think better of it. ‘But you’ll have to show me how to ride. I’ve never done this before.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Emily assured her. ‘You’re in safe hands.’

Clarissa hesitated. ‘On the bike?’ she teased.

Emily winked. ‘That too.’

Fuck it.

What was life without a little excitement?

Clarissa texted Miri that night to tell her that she’d got the job.

Thank you, she typed. The push you gave me was exactly what I needed.

Oh Clarissa! Miri replied. I’m so happy for you! I can’t wait to hear all about it!

I’ll call tomorrow, Clarissa promised. I have so much to tell you.

‘Put it away,’ Emily said, smiling lazily from Clarissa’s pillow, ‘and come back to bed.’

‘Coming.’

Clarissa dropped the phone onto the sofa and did as she was told. Emily’s clothes were spread over the floor, there were pizza boxes and beer bottles strewn recklessly across the kitchenette, and Clarissa had even skipped her regular mission with her online gaming group. Her tidy little life had been thoroughly disarrayed.

And she couldn’t be happier.

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If you want to read more of Josie's short stories, then you can find her short story collection 'Broken Wings' here.