Bash
Seven years ago
Thatdamnminutehandis stuck in place. Only two minutes have passed since I last looked at the clock, but I’m convinced it’s lying to me.
Maybe it needs batteries. I make a mental note to check.
Time is funny like that, and always seems to change speed depending on your expectations. When you’re dreading something, it stretches every second like it’s enjoying watching you squirm.
But the good stuff?
A surprise afternoon off, a night with friends, or those rare moments when everything feels right?
Poof.
Gone in a blink, leaving you wondering where the hell it went.
I’m supposed to be working, not…daydreaming. As a scientist, I hate to even use the word, but there’s no other way to explain why I’ve spent the past fifteen minutes staring at the same stack of reports without absorbing a damn thing.
I glance at the clock again.
Only one minute gone this time.
I shove the papers away with a sigh and move to the microscope. The image blurs as I adjust the dial, then everything comes into sharp focus. Twinkling cells sit between two glass slides, though their luster has faded in the hours since I’ve had them.
At first, they’re always lively. They shake and tremble in some sort of interpretive dance I don’t know how to decipher, but that spark of life fades faster than we can study it.
Time isn’t on either of our sides, it seems.
Movement at the door makes my head shoot up, but it’s only Sprocket. She clocks my eagerness, her brow lifting and her lips twitching in amusement, so I do the rational thing and shove my burning face into the microscope.
“Sebastian,” she calls in greeting.
I try for nonchalant as I glance up, like she might not realize I already saw her and tried to hide.
“Hey, Sprocket.”
She smirks but says nothing else as I force myself to get some work done. After a few minutes of staring blankly into the lens, I sit back with a sigh. The doorknob twists, and my head snaps up again in a response that’s becoming Pavlovian.
Only this time, I’m rewarded.
Xeni’s long hair swishes behind him as he steps in, gleaming like strands of spun pearls in the overhead lights. He surveys the room before he spots me standing there with my hand half raised in an awkward wave. His solid white eyes lift with his smile, and he flutters his fingers back at me before heading into the locker room.
For years now, I’ve thought these feelings for him might fade, but then he does something as simple as tossing me a grin, and I melt like butter. I go gooey and doe-eyed, and it’s game over.
Ever since the day we met, something has pulled me to him, but Xeni seems untouchable. Too elegant, tooperfect, and aloof enough that I can’t read him.
We talk often, telling jokes and sharing stories. We sit together in the break room, stop and chat when we run into each other in the hallways, and stay late to discuss work sometimes, but it ends there.
I’ve always felt like a background character in his story—someone who fades into the scenery while he commands the spotlight. He’s effortlessly charismatic, and graceful in a way that feels like gravity bends around him.
I’m the quiet extra in the corner. The one who watches and waits, and never quite believes I belong in the same frame as him.
He’s the protagonist.
I’m just…there.
A footnote. Something he steps past on his way to the next dramatic scene.
