Episode 5: The Summer That Changed Everything
1045 Words
By the time July arrived, the waiting felt different.
It wasn’t lighter. It wasn’t easier. But it was familiar, like something I knew how to carry now without dropping pieces of myself along the way. His second year had settled into a rhythm we both understood. Calls every day. FaceTime whenever we could steal the time. Messages threaded through ordinary moments like they belonged there.
Distance had stopped feeling like an obstacle.
It felt like a condition of our lives. One we had learned to live inside.
When he told me he was coming home in July, I tried not to let myself spiral into anticipation. I’d learned that lesson already. Visits were short. Time slipped faster when he was near. Holding onto excitement too tightly only made the goodbye harder.
Still, I counted the days.
The drive to the airport felt longer than it should have. My hands were restless the entire way, fingers twisting together in my lap as if they needed something solid to hold onto. I told myself to breathe. To stay calm. To remember that he was real, not just a face on a screen.
When he walked through the doors, everything else faded.
He looked the same and different all at once. Familiar in the way his shoulders sloped, the way he carried himself without needing attention. Changed in the way he moved with purpose now, like his body had learned how to belong to discipline.
He smiled when he saw me.
Not wide. Not dramatic. Just enough.
We hugged, careful but close, and for a moment the world felt like it had clicked into place. Like this was how things were always supposed to feel.
He didn’t stay long.
A few days, maybe three. Enough time to settle into each other again. Enough time to remember that what we shared existed beyond calls and screens.
We didn’t try to make it special.
We stayed in. Ate meals together. Took quiet drives with the windows down. Sat side by side, talking about nothing important and everything that mattered. We played video games again late into the night, shoulders brushing, laughter low and familiar.
“This still feels normal,” I said one evening without thinking.
He glanced over at me, controller paused in his hands. “It is.”
That word stayed with me.
Normal.
Not dramatic. Not rushed. Not fragile.
Normal.
At night, we talked more.
Not about plans exactly, but about who we were becoming. He told me about how the second year had changed him. How the constant pressure had eased just enough for him to think again. How he knew now what he could handle and what he wouldn’t sacrifice.
“I don’t want a life that’s all distance,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I missed everything.”
I nodded. “Me either.”
We didn’t talk about consequences. We didn’t need to. We both understood what loving each other across this much space meant. We understood what choosing each other again and again required.
When he left, it hurt.
But it didn’t feel like loss.
It felt like continuation.
The weeks after July passed in a blur of routine. Calls. Messages. Familiar rhythms. Life carried on the way it always did. Nothing felt wrong. Nothing felt off.
Until it did.
At first, I thought I was just tired.
Waiting had taught me how to push through exhaustion, how to ignore discomfort when necessary. But this felt different. My body felt heavier. My emotions closer to the surface. Little things unsettled me in ways they hadn’t before.
I didn’t say anything right away.
I didn’t want to imagine something that wasn’t real. Didn’t want to speak it into existence without certainty.
But certainty came whether I was ready for it or not.
The test felt impossibly small in my hands.
I stared at it longer than I needed to, my heart pounding so loudly I was sure it could be heard outside the room. When the result appeared, the world tilted sharply, like everything had shifted a fraction to the left.
Positive.
I sat down hard on the edge of the bed, breath shallow, thoughts racing too fast to catch.
I wasn’t scared of the baby.
I was scared of the weight of what this meant.
Of distance. Of timing. Of the world’s expectations crashing down on something that had been built quietly, carefully, over years.
I didn’t tell him right away.
Not because I didn’t trust him, but because I needed to understand it myself first. Needed to feel the reality settle before I shared it.
When I finally did, it was during a FaceTime call, late at night, the screen casting soft light across his face.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
He straightened slightly. “Okay.”
My hands shook as I took a breath. “I’m pregnant.”
He didn’t speak immediately.
For a split second, fear spiked in my chest. Then his expression shifted. Not panic. Not anger. Just stillness. Focus.
“Are you okay?” he asked first.
I nodded, tears slipping free despite my effort to stay steady. “I think so. I just… I didn’t want you to hear it any other way.”
He exhaled slowly, like he was grounding himself.
“I’m here,” he said. “We’ll figure this out. Together.”
That was it.
No yelling. No disbelief. No distance.
Just presence.
We talked for a long time that night. About logistics. About timing. About fears we hadn’t spoken aloud before. About how nothing about this was ideal, but none of it felt wrong either.
“I don’t regret us,” he said quietly. “Not for a second.”
Neither did I.
The distance didn’t disappear after that.
If anything, it became heavier.
But it also became purposeful.
We weren’t just waiting anymore.
We were building something real — something that would exist whether the miles cooperated or not.
And as his second year continued, as life moved forward faster than either of us had planned, one thing became clear:
Love had changed shape.
It wasn’t just something we felt anymore.
It was something we were responsible for.
- Writer
