Gemotions

"It's just… a story," Mark mumbled, eyes darting from the book in Eliza’s hands to his own fidgeting fingers. Eliza felt a knot tighten in her stomach. A story. A fictionalized account of *their* life? The one they built together, brick by painstaking brick?

She held the novel at arm's length, as if it were contaminated. The title, "The Ballad of Eliza and Mark," was nauseatingly saccharine. Eliza wouldn't ask him anything. Not a single question.

She turned and began to gather her things. Her coat, her purse, her car keys. He could sit there and wait. She had places to go, things to do. A dinner with her friends. Grocery shopping. Everything, anything, other than confronting the man who’d stolen their life and turned it into a… romance novel.

Her fingers closed around the cold metal of her car keys, and she let herself out the front door.