Almost Is Never Enough

I don't know when it started. Time, I mean. Maybe it’s always been a bit off, like when a clock tick-tocks just slightly out of sync. No one notices it until you’re trying to find a rhythm and it’s just... wrong. And then, after a while, it doesn’t feel strange anymore. It feels like home.

But that’s how Mavis always was, unpredictable, untethered. And when she left, it was like the world paused, waiting for her to return.

She never did. At least, not how I expected.

When she moved away, I didn’t think it would last. “I’ll be back soon,” she promised. “Just need to clear my head, you know?” But “soon” turned into years, and eventually, her promises became postcards filled with little more than “I’m still here. I’ll be home soon.”

But she never came back. Not fully.

I used to wait for her. We used to talk all the time, at least, before she left. Back then, it wasn’t just our conversations that were loud, chaotic even. It was our whole relationship. Every argument, every laugh, every dramatic moment. We were connected by a constant flow of noise and action. Then, when she left, the noise stopped. It was a silence that I didn’t know how to fill.

When she returned, I thought it would be like it was before, chaotic, loud, impossible to ignore. But there was something different in her eyes, a flicker of something unfamiliar, like she had found some new version of herself out there in the world, and now, she was trying to fit it back into a place she no longer recognized.

And then, one night, I found the watch.

It was tucked behind the water heater, where I’d shoved it years ago. It wasn’t just any watch. I had made it in college, a project I never told anyone about. It didn’t just tell time. It bent time. A failed experiment. A half-baked idea born out of desperation. I’d built it during a phase of trying to rewrite my own regrets, to undo the things I’d gotten wrong. And when it worked? I panicked and hid it away.

Mavis found it anyway. Of course, she did.

“What’s this?” she asked, her fingers already fiddling with the dials, intrigued by the odd, heavy presence of it.

“Take that off,” I said, reaching for her wrist, but she pulled away too quickly, a mischievous grin playing at the edges of her mouth.

She squinted at the dial. “It says ‘rewind.’ Why does it say ‘rewind?’”

“It doesn’t,” I replied quickly, trying to mask the panic rising in my chest.

But she pressed it anyway.

The world around us paused. The toast in the kitchen froze mid-burn. The clock on the wall clicked backward. I held my breath. Time snapped backward, and then we were standing exactly where we had been thirty seconds ago.

Mavis stared at me, her face a mix of shock and curiosity. Then her lips twitched upward. “Oh,” she said, with a slow realization. “That explains a lot.”

She didn’t stop there.

Mavis started using the watch every chance she got. Rewinding arguments just to land better punchlines. Fast-forwarding through awkward silences. Pausing time to steal my fries. I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. She was rewriting everything, dodging consequences as if they were minor annoyances, as if time itself were just a tool to get exactly what she wanted.

At first, it was funny. It was chaotic in the way only Mavis could be. But soon, it wasn’t.

The watch began to lose its power, like time itself had become tired of being tampered with. It wasn’t just the small things anymore. Every time Mavis rewound, it felt like something bigger was slipping away, something we couldn’t get back. Something... important.

It wasn’t until one evening, when Mavis rewound a conversation just to avoid an uncomfortable moment, that I realized what we were losing. With every change, every little rewind or fast-forward, the emotional weight of our history was being altered, erased. The connection between us was no longer tethered by the same reality. And somewhere between all the rewinds and fast-forwards, I began to feel... disconnected from her.

One night, after a particularly reckless use of the watch, something broke.

The house flickered. The lights blinked out of sync. The toaster flashed in triplicate, as if it couldn’t decide whether to burn the waffles or spit them out perfectly golden. The walls trembled, not with vibration, but with potential.

Mavis looked at me, her face suddenly serious, like she’d finally caught up with the magnitude of what she was doing. “Fix it,” she said, her voice almost pleading.

“I can’t,” I replied, my heart sinking. “It’s too far gone.”

She took a step back. Her fingers wrapped around the watch like it was the only thing anchoring her. “Then don’t rewind this,” she whispered.

The silence afterward felt heavy, like it had been earned through the choices we made. No more edits, no more fixes. Just the weight of everything we had avoided.

Mavis left the next morning. She didn’t say goodbye, at least, not the way I had expected. No tearful reunion, no dramatic hugs or promises to stay in touch. Just a wave and the sound of her footsteps fading as she walked away.

I wanted to say something, to tell her to stay, but the words caught in my throat. I watched her leave, and I knew that was it. She wasn’t coming back. Not the way I’d hoped.

Now, I don’t hear from Mavis as often. When we do talk, it’s different, real. It’s raw. It’s like we’ve both stopped running from the things we don’t want to face, and the truth is all that’s left.

I don’t know where the watch is now. I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter anymore. I think about it sometimes, though, when I open the drawer where I left it. Wonder if it still has the power to change things. Or if Mavis left it there on purpose, knowing that the only thing you can’t rewind is the truth.

I can feel time hesitate, like it’s holding its breath, waiting to see if I’ll try to undo it again.

I don’t.

Almost is never enough. But now is.