against the clock

If there’s one question that Matic hopes to never hear again after this week, it’s “are you sure?” Everyone means well, of course, but it hasn’t made his decision to appear tonight any easier. Some days he’s glad it happened. It really was all for the best – as galling as it is to put into words – and he’s so much happier now that his drumkit feels like an extension of himself when he sits at it, rather than something unnatural and intimidating. Other days he thinks it would have been best if he’d never joined at all: never said yes, never got swept along with it all, never thought that everything had to work out in the end just because he was surrounded by his best friends and wanted it more than anything in the world. And some days he just wishes he’d seen the writing looming on the wall before everyone else and not told himself if I just try harder and if I just get better until the words stuck in his head better than any of their drum arrangements ever could. Maybe then he’d be greeting them with the same enthusiasm as Martin is right now ahead of him. At least I was here for the music, he remembers snapping at Martin when he’d tried to see him a few days after the talk. Someday Bojan’s going to realise that you’re not, and then you’ll be where I am. Maybe if he’d realised, he’d still be enjoying the same friendship with them as before, not just hurt and regret patched together with an occasional coffee and the odd check in text. Because, really, that’s the one thing he misses most. The one thing that they can’t get back, no matter how hard Kris tries and how upbeat Bojan is and how much Jan and Martin try to reason and mediate. No matter how desperate any of them are, no matter how much they wish it. There’s no turning the clock back. There’s no undoing what has been done. Sometimes he suspects he’ll go on wishing it for the rest of his life, against all reason. But right now, in this very second, he’s glad he said yes to Stoziče. And as he steps forward to greet his old bandmates, he’s glad they asked too. Things can never be what they once were, but maybe he can put at least a few ghosts to rest tonight.