Gemotions

He slammed the car door a little too hard, the metallic clang echoing in the otherwise quiet parking lot. Work had been a pressure cooker, and now the late afternoon light was doing nothing to ease his agitation. He'd decided a little retail therapy was in order, and the used bookstore was his usual escape.

He found a first edition of "Moby Dick" he’d been eyeing for weeks. As he flipped through the yellowed pages, a note slipped out, a receipt from a Parisian café. He stared at it, the foreign script a wall he didn't want to scale.

His shoulders tightened. He wished he could go anywhere but here. The small piece of paper felt like a secret he wasn’t meant to know. The urge to toss the book aside and just walk away was powerful. He paid for the book, and as he left, the receipt felt like a weight in his pocket.