Mr. Bhatnagar was speaking, his voice echoing through the conference room, but to me it was nothing more than background noise—gibberish I couldn’t untangle. My eyes, my ears, my whole being were tuned elsewhere. To the clock on the wall. To the relentless tick-tick that seemed louder than the presentation. Each passing second wasn’t dragging—it was pulling me closer to her.

Attending a meeting and not paying attention… that was new. But not entirely foreign. Because whenever it came to her, I had always been this way. Even in school, I would sit in classrooms where teachers scribbled equations on blackboards, while my heart counted the minutes until the bell rang—until I could run off to see my Rose.