When The Silence Begins

I Searched for Her

The morning came slow, and I let it.

I stayed in bed longer than usual, the sheets tangled around my legs, the sun pressing soft and steady against the wall like it had nowhere else to be. My body didn’t ache, but my chest did—in that strange, hollow way that only follows something fleeting and beautiful.

Lila.

Her name echoed in the silence like a dropped pebble in still water. Over and over again.

I hadn’t meant to think of her this much. I told myself it was just a moment, a shared table, a casual laugh between strangers passing through the same town. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t casual, and she wasn’t just anyone.

When I finally pulled myself out of bed, everything felt heavier. Brushing my teeth. Pulling on my jeans. Folding the sheet just because it was something to do with my hands. I moved through the room like I was rehearsing a version of myself that belonged to yesterday.

Downstairs, the receptionist greeted me with a cheerful “Bom dia,” and I returned it with a smile that didn’t quite reach.

I stepped into the street.

The air smelled like sea salt and oranges. A group of kids rushed past me, chasing a soccer ball barefoot across the cobblestones. An old man in a straw hat watered the plants on his balcony, humming a song I didn’t recognize. Tavira was awake and alive. But I wasn’t walking for any of that.

I was looking for her.

I didn’t admit it to myself right away. At first, I told myself I was just going for a walk. Just stretching my legs, exploring the side streets I hadn’t seen yet. But that was a lie. I knew it. My legs knew it. They led me not by curiosity, but by memory.

I retraced the path from the pastelaria. The one where we walked after lunch, where she pointed out the painted tiles that reminded her of Morocco. I passed the bench where we’d sat for three minutes in silence before she told me about the stray dog that followed her for six blocks in Vietnam. I found myself peering into cafés—not for coffee, but for a glimpse of white linen and freckled skin.

I didn’t know what I expected. Maybe that she’d be there again, at the same table. Maybe that I’d walk around a corner and she’d be crouched down photographing a doorway or a cat or the texture of a crumbling wall. She seemed like the kind of person who noticed those things.

But Tavira gave me no such gift.

Every time I thought I caught sight of her—just a flicker of shoulder-length hair in the crowd, a shadow that looked like her laugh—I followed, only to come up short.

Once, I entered a bookstore she might’ve liked. It smelled like old paper and lemon oil. The shelves were uneven and bursting. I stood by the travel section and skimmed the spines, pretending I was looking for something. I wasn’t.

I left empty-handed, but somehow heavier.

I walked into a gallery, too. She had mentioned her love for art—the kind without explanations, the kind that “makes you feel something or pisses you off, or both.” I thought maybe she’d be there. She wasn’t.

At some point, I sat on the stone steps leading down to the river and watched a heron glide low across the water. I tried to be still, like I used to, but my thoughts kept darting back to her.

Her hair had curled slightly at the ends, like it was still drying from the sea. Her freckles had deepened under the sun. Her smile was the kind you wanted to earn. She didn’t fill silences out of discomfort—she respected them, like someone who understood that not every pause needed a paragraph.

The things she said kept repeating in my head.

About hiking alone in Patagonia just to “feel small again.” About a woman in Istanbul who made her cry with a single poem recited over tea. About how sometimes, when she gets too anxious, she runs into the ocean fully clothed—just to remind herself she’s real.

Who was I compared to that?

A man who used to write code and convince himself it meant something. A man who used to mistake comfort for meaning. Who mistook stillness for peace, when it was really just numbness. And now I was chasing someone who didn’t even know what she’d woken up in me.

I sat with that thought until the light began to turn golden. The breeze smelled like grilled sardines and sunscreen.

I got up and walked the long way home.

I didn’t find her. Not that day. But maybe the point wasn’t finding her. Maybe it was the fact that for the first time in a long time, I was willing to look.