Carl thought about what he had written on the notepad for the rest of the week.
He hoped that the person on the other side of the notepad wasn't a manager or someone in HR. He started to worry that maybe someone was monitoring the washrooms. He started to worry that it was all a trap.
But he also started to hope that it was someone he liked. Specifically he hoped it was Brad.
He knew it was near impossible that the person on the other side of the notepad was Brad, but he couldn't help it.
Carl had thought his crush on Brad was situational. That it was only because he was lonely and living through a global pandemic that he had latched on to Brad and developed feelings for him. The fact that they drifted apart after the restrictions eased made Carl think he had been right: it had all been a hallucination brought on by his isolation and fear of dying.
But now he was remembering all the ways he found Brad charming, kind, and relatable. He thought about Brad in his spare time now. He started to think that it wasn't that he would have never fallen for Brad had the pandemic never happened; it was that the pandemic happening brought the two of them together.
Carl wanted to say all these things to Brad, but he could barely say anything to him because of Collaborate Plus. So he talked to the notepad the way he wanted to talk to Brad and tried to think of an excuse to come in on a Wednesday.
YOU ARE READING
Missing Things
General FictionIt's Missing Things, the story of Carl, a tech worker making his way through a post-pandemic office. It's a story about loss and nostalgia. It's about never being able to go back to a time you can still remember. It's about lost connections. But it'...
