The Distance Between
1105 Words
Ro didn’t cry often.
She’d trained herself out of it. Years in trauma care taught her that breaking down didn’t heal wounds—it just delayed stitching them. But when she got home from lunch with Elias, she sat in the dark, the sketch resting on her lap like an echo, and let her breath tremble.
Not from fear. From familiarity.
That was the problem. She knew him. Not in the way that made sense on paper, but in the way people who’ve lived through aches can spot each other across a room.
And now, here he was. Still kind. Still looking at her like she hadn’t scared him off with sarcasm and silence.
She didn’t know what to do with it.
Monday morning at the ER was chaos, and Ro welcomed it.
IV drips. Family members are yelling at paperwork stacked like a dare.
Noise. Movement. Order disguised as panic.
It kept her out of her head—until her shift ended, and she pulled out her phone, thumb hovering over the one text thread that had recently started glowing brighter than the others:
Elias:
“Are you free on Thursday? I found a bookstore with live jazz and terrible lighting. Thought of you.”
She read it twice, then texted back:
Ro:
“I only attend events with jazz and terrible lighting. Thursday works.”
Thursday night, she wore her simplest dress—long sleeves, dark blue, fitted at the waist. No makeup except mascara. She didn’t want to present. She wanted to arrive.
Elias was already waiting inside when she got there, seated at a corner table with two drinks and a half-smile.
“You’re early,” she said.
“You’re exactly on time,” he replied.
The jazz band filled the tiny venue with something smoky and slow. Ro let herself relax—just a little.
They talked about music. Favourite authors. How both of them were obsessed with thunderstorms for reasons neither could fully explain.
Then he asked. Quietly. Casually. “Tell me about your mother.”
Ro blinked.
She never talked about her mother.
But something in Elias’s voice—gentle, undemanding—unlocked the door.
“She was very kind,” Ro said. “The kind of woman who believed every apology and always left her windows open like hope could walk in. I grew up watching her forgive men who didn’t know how to stay.”
Elias nodded, eyes steady.
“And I told myself I’d never be like her. But then I started working in a hospital… and all I do is try to save people who don’t know how to be saved.”
He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t pity her. He just listened.
“And your father?” she asked after a long sip of wine.
“Gone,” he said. “Before, I was old enough to remember. My mom did everything. Worked two jobs, built furniture with her hands, called every sketch I drew ‘a blueprint for something better.’”
Ro smiled. “She sounds like she raised a decent man.”
“She raised a guilty one,” Elias said softly.
Ro tilted her head. “Why guilty?”
He looked away.
“Because I built a life that left her behind. Because I got out, and she didn’t.”
Silence settled between them. Not uncomfortable. Just… true.
Weeks passed like this.
Jazz clubs. Rooftop walks. Coffee on Sundays, where she said more than she meant to, and he said less than he probably wanted.
They didn’t kiss. Not yet.
But the air between them often felt like the moment right before lightning.
Then came the first c***k.
It was a Wednesday.
Ro had stayed over late at the hospital, covering for a nurse whose child had a seizure. By the time she got home, it was past midnight, and Elias had been waiting outside her apartment for almost an hour.
“You could’ve texted,” she said, startled.
“I didn’t want to say it in a message,” he replied.
Say what?
He didn’t explain. I just handed her a folder.
Inside: news clippings. Architectural firm records. One headline stood out.
“Mercer & Co. Partner Resigns After Safety Violations Spark Legal Scrutiny”
She looked up at him.
“I left before the fire,” Elias said. But I designed the structure that failed. It was supposed to hold. It didn’t.”
Ro was quiet.
“A worker was injured. "I wasn’t responsible for the shortcuts, but I signed off without double-checking the changes.”
She blinked. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I can’t build anything with you if I’m hiding the cracks.”
Later, when he left, she sat alone in her apartment, tea cooling beside her.
She admired his honesty. But it scared her, too.
Because if he was this honest… it meant he was real.
And she hadn’t figured out how to be loved by someone honest.
She avoided him for four days. Not because she was angry.
But because the feelings were no longer optional.
Lila noticed immediately.
“Why do you run from things that feel good?”
Ro didn’t look up from her coffee. “Because they stop feeling good eventually.”
Lila gave her a pointed stare. “Or maybe you sabotage them before they get the chance.”
Ro hated how much that stung.
Elias didn’t text again. I didn’t chase. Just waited.
Until Sunday morning, when she walked into her favourite café and found him already seated there holding her poetry book.
He’d never seen it before.
“You left this at my place,” he said, handing it over.
She reached for it, but he didn’t let go right away.
“Page 47,” he murmured. “That one hit me.”
She opened it.
I don’t fall in love with faces.
I fell in love with the silences between sentences.
With pauses, too scared to speak. —A.J.
His initials. Her words. Their contradiction.
“You make it hard to run,” she said, closing the book.
“I’m not asking you to run,” Elias said. “Just to stop looking for exits.”
That night, they walked through the city without speaking for half an hour.
Then Ro asked, “What happens if this works?”
Elias answered without missing a beat.
“Then we get to name the night after something we survived together.”
She looked at him. He wasn’t perfect. But he didn’t pretend to be. And that… that might be enough.
- Writer
