They are all pretending to hate this, and I could kiss every one of them for it.
Four of them around a table, the laptop open, the shared document scrolling by with everyone's cursor darting like little fish. The tall one keeps saying we should have started earlier. The one in the hoodie has drawn a frog in the margin instead of writing the introduction. Someone's phone buzzes and they all glance at it, annoyed, and set it down, and go back to arguing about who does the slides.
Oh, argue. Please. Argue about the slides.
There is a coffee going cold by the girl's elbow and she has forgotten it entirely, which means she can still forget things, which means she has enough of them. When she finally remembers and drinks it lukewarm, she makes a small face. I would give anything I no longer have for a small face at lukewarm coffee.
The hoodie one nudges the tall one's shoulder to point at something on the screen. Just nudges. Skin, cloth, the ordinary electricity of one person leaning briefly into another and thinking nothing of it. They divided the work in four minutes and spent forty more not doing it, laughing at the frog, complaining about the deadline they will absolutely meet.
This is the part nobody remembers later. Not the grade. This. The warm room, the bad coffee, the frog, the buzzing phone, the shoulders close enough to bump.
Stay a little longer, all of you. Let the meeting run late. Let it be boring.
Bless your tired hands and your cold drinks and every complaint you have not yet learned to miss.