Gemotions

He’d bumped into her at the grocery store, near the organic kale. "Sarah? Wow, you look… familiar," he'd said, his brow furrowed in a way that should have been endearing but now felt like a punch to the gut. The air seemed to compress around her, making it difficult to breathe.

She fumbled with her reusable shopping bag, her fingers clumsy and unresponsive. She tried to smile, to appear nonchalant, but her lips felt stiff, frozen in place. He asked her about her life, and she found herself offering a sanitized version, omitting all the shared secrets, the inside jokes, the childhood adventures they'd once sworn to remember forever.

She was suddenly acutely aware of her frizzy hair, her chipped nail polish, the slight stain on her shirt. She'd chosen a casual outfit, thinking she'd meet a friend, not a... stranger. The fluorescent lights of the store seemed to glare down on her.

"So, yeah," she managed, her voice barely a whisper. "Good to see you, I guess." The lie was as heavy as the bag of potatoes she was now holding.