Distance
284 Words
Chapter Six
After the power came back, we behaved as though nothing had happened.
Not coldly. Not cruelly. Just carefully enough to bruise.
Daniel stopped lingering on the steps. I stopped inventing reasons to pass his door. Our conversations shortened, trimmed of anything that might tilt toward meaning. When our schedules overlapped, we smiled with the practiced ease of people who respected boundaries they had never formally agreed to.
I told myself this was responsible. That this was what adults did when they recognized danger early enough to avoid it.
Still, my apartment felt louder. Emptier. The wall resumed its old function, solid and unmoving, no longer something that listened back.
The email arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, tucked between advertisements and updates I didn’t need. A job offer in another city. Not a promotion exactly, but an opening. A way forward that required no explanations from anyone.
I read it twice, then closed my laptop.
Leaving had always been my most reliable skill. I knew how to pack without attachment, how to tell myself that timing mattered more than people. I told myself this was no different.
I didn’t tell Daniel.
That omission became its own presence. I carried it with me through the apartment, set it down beside my bed at night, picked it up again in the morning. Each day I delayed replying to the email felt deliberate. Each day I didn’t knock on his door felt like a rehearsal for absence.
Once, I heard him on the phone through the wall. His voice was low, steady, shaped by familiarity. He said Rebecca’s name only once. That was enough.
I sat on the floor and waited for the sound to stop.
- Writer
