Gemotions

It was the way she just... smiled. A tight, forced smile that didn’t reach her eyes. The news was out. Leo and Emily, his best friend, would no longer be neighbours, no longer be partners in crime. He found himself looking at her, and feeling a strange sensation, a deep, pervasive weariness.

The world seemed to sharpen, the details around him suddenly too clear, too bright. The chipped paint on the picnic table, the way the sunlight glinted off the grass. It was too much.

“So… that’s it, then?” he mumbled, the words feeling clumsy, inadequate. He looked at his hands, then back at her, feeling a strange disconnect, like a gear stripped out of a machine. He wanted to shout. Instead, he felt the corners of his mouth droop.