Ticking Pleasure

The first time it happened, I was late for a meeting with Professor Albright, and I mean the kind of late where you're already imagining the disappointed sigh, the way he'd push his glasses up his nose and say, "Thomas, punctuality is a form of respect." I was sprinting across the quad, my messenger bag slapping against my hip, a half-eaten granola bar clenched between my teeth. The autumn air was cold and sharp, the kind that burns your lungs. My shoes were wet from the dew on the grass.

And then I tripped.

Not a graceful stumble. A full-on, arms-flailing, face-plant-into-the-pavement disaster. My knee hit the concrete first, a hot spike of pain. The granola bar skittered away. I was on the ground, staring at the tiny pebbles embedded in the asphalt, and I felt this wave of pure, unfiltered humiliation wash over me. I wanted to disappear. I wanted the world to just stop so I didn't have to feel this anymore.

And it did.

The world stopped. The bird that had been chirping in the oak tree went silent mid-note. The leaves that had been tumbling across the path froze in the air, caught in a lazy swirl. A girl ahead of me, mid-laugh, her mouth open, her eyes crinkled, was a statue. The entire campus was a photograph.

I stayed on my knees for a long moment, my brain trying to catch up. I could hear my own heartbeat. I could feel the cold concrete through the tear in my jeans. I stood up slowly, wincing at the scrape on my knee. I reached out and touched the frozen leaf. It was solid, real, but the air around it felt different. Thicker. Like honey.

I walked over to the frozen girl. Her name was Chloe. She was in my English seminar. She had a boyfriend, a guy named Mark who played lacrosse and always smelled like Axe body spray. She was pretty in a way that felt unreachable. I stood in front of her, close enough to see the tiny freckles on her nose. I could smell her shampoo. Something floral and clean.

I didn't think. I just acted.

I leaned in and kissed her. Her lips were soft, but cold. Unresponsive. It felt like kissing a mannequin. Weird. Not satisfying. I pulled back, my heart hammering. I felt a thrill, sure, but also a deep, unsettling wrongness. This wasn't right. This was theft.

So I walked away. I found a bench and sat down. I focused on the frozen world. The silence was absolute. I thought about my calculus exam. I thought about the essay I hadn't started. I thought about how I hadn't had sex in eight months, not since Sarah broke up with me because I was, and I quote, "too nice. Too polite. Too fucking boring in bed."

I let out a breath. I thought, *Okay. Let's try this again.*

I focused on the world, on the pressure of time, and I willed it to move. The bird chirped. The leaves fell. Chloe's laugh finished its arc. I was sitting on a bench, and nobody had seen me fall, nobody had seen me kiss her. I was just a guy, sitting on a bench.

I was also a guy who could stop time.

That was three weeks ago.

I've gotten better at it. It's not about wanting to disappear anymore. It's about focus. I close my eyes, I feel the rhythm of the world, the constant hum of everything moving at once, and I just... press down on it. Like muting a phone. And everything goes quiet.

I don't use it for anything bad. I swear. I'm not some creep. I've never touched anyone again. The thought of it, the coldness of it, it felt like a violation I couldn't stomach. But I have used it for other things.

I use it to finish exams. I stop time, pull out my textbook, check my answers, put it back. I'm not cheating, I'm just... being thorough. I use it to get extra sleep. I'll stop time, take a nap on the library couch, wake up, and start it again. No one's the wiser. I use it to avoid awkward conversations. I see my ex-girlfriend Sarah walking toward me in the hallway, and I just stop everything, walk around her, and start time again from a safe distance.

And I use it for the other thing.

The thing I don't tell anyone about.

There's a girl in my physics class. Her name is Maya. She has dark hair she ties up in a messy bun and she always chews on the end of her pen when she's thinking. She's not like Chloe. She's not unreachable. She's real. She's funny. She laughs at my jokes. She sat next to me on the first day and said, "You look like you know what you're doing," and I almost melted into the floor.

I like her. I really like her. But I'm still me. I'm still the guy who's too polite, too nice, too fucking boring. I can't just walk up to her and say what I want. I can't even look her in the eye for more than three seconds without feeling my face go red.

So I use the time stop for her.

I'll be sitting in physics, listening to Professor Han droning on about electromagnetism, and I'll feel that familiar pressure building. The horniness. The need. It's like a physical thing, a heat that starts in my stomach and spreads out. I can't concentrate. I can't think. All I can see is the curve of her neck, the way her shirt pulls across her shoulders, the way she bites her lip when she's confused.

And I stop time.

I get up from my desk. I walk over to her. I stand behind her, close enough to see the individual strands of hair that have escaped her bun. I can smell her. She smells like vanilla and laundry detergent and something else, something warm and alive. I lean down. I don't touch her. I just breathe her in.

I whisper things to her. Things I'd never say out loud. Things about what I'd do to her, how I'd touch her, how I'd make her forget every other guy she's ever been with. I tell her about the fantasies that keep me up at night, the ones that make it impossible to focus on anything else. I tell her everything.

And then I go back to my seat. I start time again. And she has no idea.

Everyone has noticed a change in me. My roommate, Derek, said I seem "chill." My mom called and said I sounded "happier." Professor Albright told me I was "finally applying myself." They don't know. They can't know. They see a guy who's relaxed, focused, getting his life together. They don't see the guy who stops the world just to smell a girl's hair and whisper his darkest desires into the silence.

But I'm starting to wonder how long I can keep this up. I'm starting to wonder if the time stop is a gift or a crutch. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever have the guts to say any of it to her when time is actually moving.

Today, I'm sitting in physics. Maya is two seats away. She's wearing a gray sweater with the sleeves pushed up. She's chewing on her pen. Professor Han is writing equations on the board. The pressure is building. The heat is spreading.

I close my eyes.

I press down.

The world goes silent.