Missing Things

things we never expected to find

"Hey," Carl said, opening the door. "You're early."

"Yeah," Brad said, coming in. "It took me less time to get here than I expected."

Carl smiled. "OK. I just need to get my keys and we can get going. You can wait in the living room if you want."

"OK," Brad said, looking inside. "Can I look at the art on your wall instead? It looks really interesting."

"Yeah, sure," Carl said. "Go ahead." His stomach was in knots he was so nervous. He was happy he had left his keys in his office.

Carl took his keys, but needed a few more seconds to calm himself. He looked at his backpack and decided to take the sketch of A Moment from his bag. Then he could show it to Brad.

The envelope was stuck to between his laptop and the inside of the laptop compartment. Carl slipped his hand into the compartment to get the envelope out and felt something hard, like the prongs of an adaptor.

He pulled out the adaptor and laughed. It had been in his bag this whole time!

He put the adaptor on his desk, and walked back into the hallway with the envelope.

Brad was leaning against the wall, staring at Faded Memory, The Crow, and Star Series.

"What do you think?" Carl asked. "Do you like them?"

"Yeah," Brad said. "But they feel kind of lonely."

"Lonely? How?"

"Before I tell you, you need to keep in mind that I have no artistic training at all! These are just my feelings about the paintings. OK?"

"OK."

"Ok so that first one? No one's in the scene. It's just the sea. It's like you're looking out at the sea alone. The second one is just this crow staring at nothing. It's by itself, alone. It's really kind of sad the way it's just staring out at the sky, as if it's waiting for something. Even the first one feels like it's waiting for something. Then there's that last one. And, to me, it's the saddest and loneliest one of the three. But that might just be me. I find stars really sad and lonely."

Carl leaned against the wall next to Brad. "You find stars sad and lonely? Why?"

"I don't know. The distance? Not just the physical distance, the distance in time. You look at a star and never think about how the star is so far away that it takes forever for the light to get to us. You never think that entire civilizations have started and ended in the time it's taken for the light to get to us. All those people have lived and died between now and when that light left that star. That star might not even be there anymore." He turned to look at Carl. "Have you ever read The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke?"

"No."

Brad turned back to looking at the painting. "OK, so in that book, there are these people living on a planet and this spaceship from Earth lands on it. And this spaceship is a long-haul spaceship headed for someplace centuries away, and everyone in it is in stasis, but a few of the people on it come out of stasis to fix the ship. Anyways, one of the people from the ship starts a relationship with a woman on the planet, and she gets pregnant. But he still leaves. He goes into stasis on this long haul, multi-century space mission. And she stays behind, sending him messages throughout her life. And when he finally gets them, she's dead. He watches her get old and die in these messages, never being able to talk to her or touch her again."

Brad's voice cracked. Carl touched one of his fingers to Brad's hand, and Brad linked his finger to Carl's.

"It was the saddest thing I had ever read," Brad said. "Granted, I was in grade ten when I read it, but it was sad enough that it stuck with me this whole time. The idea that you would abandon someone you love that way..." he trailed off. "Did Mike tell you about his friend who died during the pandemic?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, well, when he told me that story, I knew I had to talk to you again. I didn't want to feel that kind of regret. I had wanted to talk to you before then, but I kept feeling awkward about it. And then when I got over feeling awkward about it, Collaborate Plus kept me from telling you what I wanted to tell you."

Carl's heart started to pound. "What did you want to tell me?" he said, barely able to talk above a whisper.

Brad inhaled. He gripped Carl's finger tighter. "That I had feelings for you," he whispered. "That I wanted to spend more time with you. Go for lunch with you and watch movies together with you. That I didn't want to let a chance at happiness pass me by." He sighed. "I don't know. Maybe this won't lead to happiness — maybe this is the worst decision I'll ever make — but I would rather take this chance and end up miserable than let it pass and live with regret and sadness from something I never did."

Carl stared at the one bright star in the Star Series painting. He thought about the first time he had talked to Brad during that office trivia game. How he had had a feeling about him, and about how that feeling had lead him to sending Brad a funny meme.

Carl linked all his fingers with Brad's, and Brad gave his hand a squeeze.

"Do you want to eat here instead of going out?" Carl said, turning to look at Brad. "We can watch a movie together and eat, the way we used to, but this time we'll be in the same room."

Brad looked at him and smiled. "Yeah. I'd like that."

"OK," Carl said, smiling. "Let's do that."