A Native American woman reminisces on the story her great-grandfather would tell about running away with her great-grandmother. The woman draws parallels between the story and her own first love.

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

A mother sorrowfully recounts her daughter’s first love and its destructive effects.

A young couple helplessly in love spend their last night together at a park before they begin college at different schools.

A lovestruck journalist and a torn painter pull the threads of their affair in opposite directions: he desires something more permanent, while she feels indebted to her husband and sons.

A privileged young woman from New England falls in love with a practical Midwesterner, but can their love withstand the grief of losing a child?

A woman tries to understand the space-time continuum and his love.

There are many stories from the days of the first refuges to Mars, but none of them are love stories.

A man remembers a fateful autumn during his junior year of high school, which he spent playing football in apple orchards, riding in his best friend's car, and falling in love.

Vignettes of a number of relationships, most of them troubled, are glimpsed through the descriptions of creatures in this bestiary of the imaginary.