Gemotions

The ringing phone sliced through the quiet of the apartment. Sarah watched David answer, his back to her, and the way he hunched made her chest tighten. He spoke in hushed tones, the words swallowed by his hand pressed against the receiver. Afterward, he claimed it was his mother, but the way he avoided her gaze, the sudden flush on his cheeks…something felt wrong. She’d found the phone tucked away in his drawer, a phone she didn't recognize.

Her fingers fidgeted, picking at the loose threads of the couch cushion. She replayed the scene in her mind, over and over, each time the knot in her stomach growing tighter. Why would he need a second phone? What was he hiding? The silence between them felt heavier now, charged with a current she couldn't name.

She tried to brush it off, to chalk it up to her own anxieties. But the little voice inside her head, the one that whispered doubts and fears, had now become a deafening roar. Her appetite vanished, replaced by a constant, gnawing unease.