CHAPTER THREE

As I left the store and stepped back into the cool evening air, my thoughts started to wander. The normal routine of walking home should have been calming, but something about the interaction kept creeping back into my mind.

His hand.

I couldn’t shake the image of it—how large it had been, how solid and strong. I had seen hands before, of course. Lots of hands. Hands on desks, on books, on phones. But this... this was different. I couldn’t remember the last time a simple gesture had made me stop and actually look.

And why had I looked? Why had I let my eyes wander from his hand up to his arm, to his face, almost like I was searching for something?

I shook my head, trying to push it away, but it lingered. The strange thing wasn’t that I had noticed, but how I had felt when our eyes met. It was quick, just a fleeting moment, but there was a strange weight to it, a quiet understanding that I couldn’t quite place.

I pulled my jacket tighter around me as I walked down the street, but no matter how hard I tried to focus on something else, my thoughts kept returning to those hands. The muscular build. The veins. The way they seemed to speak without saying a word.

I wasn’t someone who usually noticed those things. Hands were hands, people were people. I didn’t think much of either. But now, every time I closed my eyes, it was all I could see—the strength, the presence, the intensity of it.

When I got home, I barely touched the snacks I’d bought. I tossed them onto the kitchen counter and went straight to my room, shutting the door behind me with a soft click.

I sat at my desk, staring blankly at the wall, trying to get my mind to focus on something, anything else. But all I could picture was his hand.

Was this what it felt like to notice something... or someone? For the first time? It was strange. Unusual. And for reasons I didn’t fully understand, I couldn’t forget it.

That night, after tossing and turning in my bed, I found myself sitting at my desk, the soft glow of my desk lamp illuminating the room. I wasn’t sure what had drawn me to it—maybe the restless feeling, maybe the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about his hand—but without much thought, I reached for a piece of paper and a pencil.

At first, my hand moved slowly, unsure of where it was going. But then, almost without realizing it, I began sketching. The lines came easy, almost instinctively—thick and solid. The outline of a hand. His hand. The way the fingers curved, the veins that I couldn’t forget, the muscle definition that seemed to stand out so clearly in my mind.

The more I drew, the more I found myself lost in it. I wasn’t trying to make it perfect, but somehow, the shapes started to take on a life of their own. The hand seemed to take shape on the page, each line mirroring what I had seen earlier, but with a clarity I hadn’t expected.

I paused for a moment, staring at the paper. The drawing was far better than I thought it would be. In fact, it almost felt like I had captured more than just the image of the hand. It was like I had captured the feeling—the strength, the presence. Something that had stuck with me since that moment in the store.

I sat back in my chair and stared at the drawing for a few moments, my thoughts hazy, unsure of what to make of it. Why had I drawn it? Why was I still thinking about it?

But before I could get too caught up in the questions, my stomach growled, pulling me back to the present.

I sighed and stood up, stretching out my legs before heading to the kitchen. I grabbed the snacks I had bought earlier—chips, cookies, nothing that would require much effort—and sat down at the table. The quiet crunch of the chips filled the room as I ate, the repetitive sound almost calming. For a few minutes, I let my mind wander, but this time it wasn’t the hand that consumed my thoughts. It was something else.

My assignment.

I hadn’t even started it yet, and it was due tomorrow. The sudden shift in focus surprised me. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about school—it was just that I usually didn’t feel so… compelled to focus on something like this. The work felt distant, disconnected from the rest of my life. But now, as I chewed on another chip, my mind seemed to clear, and I could feel the pull of the assignment, the need to get it done.

I finished eating, wiped my hands on a napkin, and pulled the papers toward me, the weight of responsibility suddenly feeling more pressing. For a while, I lost myself in the work—researching, writing, and making progress.

And for the first time in a while, I wasn’t thinking about hands, or strangers, or any of the strange feelings that had clung to me earlier. I was thinking about something else entirely: the assignment that needed to be finished.

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