Gemotions

The scent of lavender from the bath she’d just taken, usually soothing, now felt artificial. The world felt unbalanced, tilted off its axis. He had always tried, he thought, to be a good partner, but the manuscript told another story.

He stumbled upon it accidentally, the pages of a Google Doc open on her laptop. The character in the novel, a man clinging desperately to the past, afraid to embrace change, felt like a twisted reflection of himself. The details, the references to his nostalgic tendencies, his fear of taking risks, were all too accurate.

He felt a deep sense of… failure. He could not look away. He closed the laptop slowly, the clicking sound a jarring disruption in the suffocating silence.