The Space Between Words

Some love stories don't disappear when the people do. They live in the waiting, in the choosing, in the stillness."

The train ride to Portland was long.

Too long.

Yuna watched the landscape blur past the window — mountains, rivers, the occasional flash of a town — as her breath fogged the glass. She kept her fingers wrapped around the strap of her backpack, the one Eli had helped her zip that morning with quiet hands and that soft, unreadable expression.

She hadn't cried at the station.

Neither had he.

That somehow made it harder.

Her residency housing was smaller than she expected — a studio tucked above a little bakery, where the windows fogged with heat every morning and the scent of cinnamon drifted through her curtains by 6 a.m.

She unpacked slowly.

Clothes. Books. Notebooks. A picture of her and Mina from their first year. A pressed flower Eli had once tucked between the pages of a borrowed novel. The postcard she had written but never mailed.

And her journal.

She opened it her first night, fingers trembling, heart heavy.

"Today I left home. And love didn't chase me.It just waited. Silently. Trusting I'd return."

The residency days were filled with quiet people and loud thoughts.

Writers from all over — some already published, some like her — unsure and yearning. They sat in converted classrooms and sunlit studios and tried to turn memory into meaning.

Yuna struggled at first.

The words came slow.

Her mind wandered too often.

To Eli. To his voice. To the way he touched her wrist gently whenever he needed her attention.

She started carrying her phone like a lifeline.

He didn't text much.

But when he did, it always landed right.

Eli: Had your coffee today? Or do I need to teleport and fix it?

Yuna: It's terrible here. Like brown water pretending to be brave.

Eli: Don't worry. I'll teach them.

She missed his voice more than she thought she would.

So she started recording little voice memos at night.

"Hi. Today I saw a dog that looked like a loaf of bread and thought of you."

"I wrote five sentences and hated all of them. But I didn't delete them. That's something, right?"

"I miss you. Not in a dramatic way. In the kind where everything's just… quieter without you."

She didn't always send them.

But they helped.

One night, she sat on the rooftop of the building — legs dangling over the edge, eyes turned toward the moon.

A few other residents joined her, laughing softly, passing a bottle of wine.

One of them, a girl named Lila, leaned toward her. "Got someone back home?"

Yuna hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah."

"Long-distance is hard."

Yuna smiled faintly. "Yeah. But it's not the distance that hurts."

"What is it then?"

"The silence between the missing."

Weeks passed.

Yuna wrote.

Not perfectly. Not prolifically.

But honestly.

Her pieces were raw. Unfinished. More emotion than structure. But her mentors called them brave.

She called them hers.

Eli sent her a package in the mail during her third week — no letter, just a thermos, a bag of her favorite tea, and a tiny hand-written note that said:

"Come back safely.Come back slowly.Just come back whole."

She cried when she read it.

Then she brewed the tea and wrote five more pages than she had the day before.

The loneliness came in waves.

Sometimes she embraced it.

Sometimes she called Mina at midnight just to hear someone breathe.

Sometimes she stared at her phone, wondering if Eli missed her as much as she missed him.

She never doubted his love.

But love from afar is a strange thing.

It's soft.

Quiet.

Easily misunderstood.

In her fifth week, she finally finished her first major piece.

It was a letter.

To Eli.

She didn't send it.

But she read it aloud to the group one night, hands shaking, voice small.

When she finished, the room was silent.

Then someone clapped.

Then everyone did.

She left before anyone could talk to her.

That night, she texted Eli:

Yuna: I read something about you tonight. To strangers. I think you'd be proud.

Eli: I am. Always.

Eli: Come home soon.

She began counting the days backward now.

Not forward.

Fifteen.

Twelve.

Nine.

Her heart beat faster with each sunset.

And yet—

She feared the return.

Not because she didn't want to see him.

But because she didn't know who she'd be when she did.

And she didn't know if he'd still recognize her.

Three days before the program ended, she stood by the train tracks after a long walk, holding her phone to her ear, heart racing.

She had dialed him before she could think twice.

He picked up.

"Yuna?"

"I couldn't wait anymore."

Silence.

Then: "Me either."

She swallowed hard. "Do you think we'll be the same?"

"No."

Her heart dropped.

Then he added, "I think we'll be better."

She laughed through the tears.

"You're still good with words."

"Only with you."

The night before her departure, she went to the café beneath her studio and ordered a slice of cake, even though she wasn't hungry.

She wrote a new journal entry.

"He waited.I grew.Maybe love is just that —Patience without expiration."

When the train pulled into Havenbrook the next morning, she stood at the door, heart in her throat.

And when she stepped onto the platform—

He was there.

Wearing her favorite sweater.

Holding a thermos.

And smiling like nothing had changed.

But everything had.