Rewind. Brad felt like his life had flashed backward, whirring like an old VHS tape on rewind.
He had been so close…
The tape of his thoughts kept rewinding.
Defeated by a thin layer of glass!
Brad buzzed his wings in his only method of protest available to him and watched the large forms of Karam and this stranger disappear from view.
At least the other man hadn’t done anything worse than drop a mug on top of him. He just needed to have some patience and wait for someone to lift the mug. Maybe Karam would do it…when he returned.
“Sorry fellas! Table’s spoken for.”
Brad whirled about and looked up through the glass at the distorted image of Karam’s other friend who had left to get drinks.
“He’s not bad,” Brad thought to himself as he studied Nathan. Not exactly what he would have considered Karam’s type, but still…
Then he was forced to stay there, trapped and helpless, as the huge man took out his phone, scrolled through it, and ignored him completely.
Until the bartender’s sudden appearance surprised both Nathan and the tiny fly.
“Done with those?” Jeffery even made the question sound sexy.
Brad was cringing as the bartender’s giant hand reached for the mug. The two giants had exchanged some other comments, but he was too mesmerized by the hot bartender to notice.
Brad only heard “You’re cute,” unmuffled by a layer of glass, and realized the mug was gone and he was free.
But a test of his wings revealed he was grounded again.
He vibrated them, attempting to dry them, when the giant leaned forward and peered down at him, a frown forming on his face.
“Ugh… stay away from me unless you want to get squished.”
Brad’s blood ran cold when the giant lifted his glass and moved it toward him.
But then the giant hesitated, and Brad took advantage of the hesitation to move a short distance away.
“Yea,” Nathan said. “You know what’s good for you!”
Brad couldn’t believe it. Someone was finally paying attention to him, but if he pissed him off, he was likely to squish him.
Nathan returned to his phone, but lowered it a few minutes later to notice the bug had crawled closer to Karam’s seat.
As Nathan continued to stare, Brad latched onto a desperate plan. At first, he wanted to convey the shape of a ring, but he realized that would mean nothing to this man. Instead, he made two semi-circles, trying to convey the concept of a “B” for the first letter in his name.
“What?” Nathan, bored enough to indulge the bug’s weird behavior, leaned forward in his seat.
Brad’s little heart soared. He had the giant’s interest. He just needed to spell out the other letters of his name and….
“Sorry, Nathan.” A loud voice interrupted Brad’s only decent plan to this point.
Brad recognized the voice. Karam!
“This is Bernard,” Karam continued. “We were having a conversation.”
Karam took a seat, but a different one, on the other side of the table from Brad’s position. He had started to try to trace out an R, but the other man had already looked away and forgotten the bug’s strange antics.
“Good to meet ya, mate.” Bernard took Karam’s former seat at the table.
“You, too.” Nathan didn’t sound all that convincing.
Abandoning his plan with Karam’s friend, Brad rejoiced to find his wings dry enough to fly again.
He flew straight toward Karam, ignoring Bernard and Nathan.
Brad hovered in front of Karam’s bearded face.
One wing twitched. Something felt torn. His hovering became erratic. He’d endured a lot, so it was no surprise that he wasn’t performing at his best.
“You have to help me!” Brad buzzed as he tried to keep his flight level. “Take me home to Mark…”
Fly senses tingled a warning a millisecond before the loud clap.
Tumble. Drop. Bounce. Drop again. Ending up on the dirty floor beneath the table.
A wing twitched, and then the other wing did the same. A faint buzzing failed to reach the tabletop and the giants seated around it.