First Draft: Part Five

And then it starts. It starts when he returns from the break room. Tim runs back through his speech, from the top, from “Kara, I think you're great,” and, as he does, his words begin to betray him. They disappear, the words. They vanish. At first they only do so in drips: one or two at a time. At first he thinks nothing of it. They're drips. It's nothing. Tim opens his notebook and scoops the the words back up, plugs up the holes. And he moves on.

And then he goes through the speech again. And then it's a phrase that goes missing. And then an entire sentence. And panic trembles through the voice in Tim's head as he comes to “The Reasons.” And then, when he comes to “The Reasons,” they're gone. All of them. The whole section, a paragraphs-long piece of script, vanished and blank.

Gone.

Tim tries to backtrack. He goes back to the sentence before.

Gone.

All gone. So Tim reads his notes. He re-reads, his words, his sentences, his phrases. He says them out loud; he hammers them into his mind with his voice. But it only feeds the flood. As soon as they flow in, the words, the phrases, they cascade out of him again. Tim closes his eyes tight and tries to pull them back, but they're all gone. Simply gone. All of them. Gone. And the only thing they've left behind is static.

Tim starts over. He reboots. “Kara, I think you're great,” he says. His voice is soft and measured. “And–”

Kssssssssssssssss.

“And–”

Kssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

“Shit.”

The clock on his computer screen clicks over to 1:42 in silence, but Tim feels it like someone behind him taking another step closer. Like someone behind him adjusting her grip on a knife. He's managed to recall a few snippets of the speech. The first line, which never left, and a few shopworn pearls of wisdom about friendship, about why they'll both be better off apart. Nothing more.

1:43. Another step. Tim thinks that Kara will be back soon. He thinks that, Kara will stop by. Because Kara always stops by. She always has to stop by, she can't just leave me alone for one damn day. And then I'll have to do it. I'll just have to do it.

The thought that hasn't entered his mind, now that the speech is gone, is that he won't do it: that he won't break up with Kara, that he won't have to. As each minute ticks down, he knows that he's only getting closer and closer to the inevitable. And his terror deepens like a river-split canyon.

Tim thinks about the first line, and that makes him feel worse. He imagines Kara's reaction to it. She smiles at the end of the sentence. Her lips turn up, like the wings of a heart, at his words. Because he thinks she's great. Because he's going to say something nice, something sweet, something lovely. Because, maybe, he's going to say, “I love you,” and maybe they'll be together forever. Or so she thinks. Or so he thinks she thinks.

And he thinks, What if I can't go on? What if I see her smile and I can't do it? He sees himself in his mind, staring at the smiling woman across the way, helpless in the face of her happiness. He's stuck. He opens his eyes to get away from the look on Kara's face. He looks at the computer screen. 1:46. Tim's mouth is dry. Water, he thinks, and he stands up and walks away.