Time Freeze

Last night was normal.

Time flew by as usual. Zara Winters woke up at eight, met with friends for brunch at eleven, cleaned up her apartment two to four and ordered dinner from her favorite local Mexican restaurant - a plain cheese quesadilla.

Zara also started setting up her house for when her friends came over for a drink at seven; lit up a brightest bloom candle in the center of the island counter, putting wine glasses out as well as a selection of board games just in case there was a lull in conversation.

At nine, she noticed that her best guy friend, Max, posted on his Snapchat story that he was at a Post Malone concert with his friends. Her friends always tease her for having a crush on him, but that was not the case. They may have a flirty friendship that consists of banter and playful punches to the shoulder. That didn't mean anything. They were just friends.

Her friends know that that's bullcrap.

"Can I be the maid of honor at your wedding?" is what Britney asks when they first suspected of Zara's crush on Maxwell.

"Why won't you just admit it?" Piper nudges my shoulder, her eyes looking over my shoulder at my phone. She's the more quiet one, AKA, the more dangerous one in the sense that she's observant and nosy.

"Admit what?" Zara knows the answer before Piper can speak.

"That you're in love with Max!"

"Yeah, this," Carly raises her voice to sound high-pitched. "I don't love him as anything more than a friend." Carly switches back to her normal voice with a fake smile plastered across her face. "is really getting old."

Zara rolls her eyes. Is Max kind? Yes. Thoughtful? Yes. Can she always rely on him to be there for her when she needs him? Yes? And he proved that to her when her grandmother, who she was really close to, passed away years ago.

It doesn't hurt that he's muscular, smoking hot and easy on the eyes. She lifts her glass of homemade frozen mango margarita to her lips and takes a long sip in order to avoid dignify this teasing with a response. "What about you, Carly?"

Carly arches a brow. "What about me?"

"You think I didn't see you making googly eyes at the bartender last weekend?"

A blush takes over her face and neck. "I don't wanna talk about it," she mutters under her breath, but Zara hears it. Every word.

Yeah, now you know how I felt, Zara thinks to herself.

It's the next morning that something is off.

Zara does her morning routine before she goes to work. She finds herself lost in a dark rabbit hole of Instagram for an hour, she cooks herself a ham and cheese omelet and she tosses blueberries and strawberries into the blender to make her daily fruit smoothie.

Ten o'clock rolls around, so she gathers her essentials and briskly leaves her apartment. She rides the elevator to the lobby and is on her way outside when she notices something strange.

Residents would linger in the lobby; some making important business calls, shouting and swearing at the person on the other end, some collecting their mail and groaning when finding a bill in their mailbox and the front desk man listening to his rap music to drown out the chaos. That's still happening.

But they're all still.

Like statues.

The front desk man whose name I never bother to learn is positioned in his seat, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. Mrs. Day's hands are paused mid-air as she's rifling through her mail. A mother and a daughter are traipsing toward the elevators hand in hand, a stern expression etched into the mom's face.

"What..."

Zara peeks through the front doors and notices that there's a man in a suit walking across the street. Or, at least, he was walking. Before he became frozen too, just like everyone else inside.

"... in the actual..."

She storms outside and notices that the street that was always bustling with families, happily-married couples and businessmen and women has fallen into a standstill. One dog that's on a walk is lifting his leg up by a fire hydrant and another is outside of a nearby coffee shop while its owner's feeding him a pup cup.

"... fuck?"

"Zara? Zara, is that you?"

Zara spins around at the familiar voice. Max, who's the only other person unaffected by this mysterious statue epidemic, is maneuvering through everyone until he's standing right in front of me.

"For the love of God, please tell me you see this too." He gestures to the statues that surrounds us. Zara's still in so much shock, she can't bring herself to say anything so she settles for a nod instead. Max let out a breath that he was holding in and theatrically slapped his heart. "Good. Because I thought I had to admit myself into a mental asylum and those crept the... fuck out of me in those horror movies."

Her gaze lands on the coffee shop across the street. Max is a doctor and she's studying to become a lawyer to follow in her parents' footsteps. They barely see each other, too focused on their careers to spend time together or to enjoy a cup of joe together. Now that time has literally stopped, perhaps this is a chance for them to catch up and travel down memory lane.

"You wanna grab a coffee?" Zara's first job was a barista freshman year of high school. Even though the baristas in there are most-likely included in this mystery, Zara could easily brew up their vanilla lattes. "I mean, I know that this whole 'all of humanity being turned into statues' thing is mind-boggling, but... at least this gives us a chance to hang out together."

The corners of his lips turned skyward, the smile reaching his eyes. "Yeah, of course. I'd love to."