Gemotions

She paced her kitchen, the linoleum cold beneath her bare feet. The sight of the new swimming pool shimmering next door was doing it to her again. It had been built in secret, and now it stood there, a glassy monument to something she couldn't name. Her jaw clenched, and she could feel the familiar knot forming in her stomach.

She kept replaying the casual conversation they had had yesterday, the neighbor’s breezy mention of a “little getaway” to the Caribbean. Her own savings account, painstakingly built over years, seemed laughably small by comparison.

Her vision blurred, and the sound of the pool’s filter whirring seemed to intensify the pressure building behind her eyes. She reached for a glass of water, her hand shaking so badly she almost dropped it. The water tasted metallic, and she put it down, uneaten.