The beginning of leaving
739 Words
Paris stopped feeling far away.
It started feeling scheduled.
Ava’s suitcase sat open on her bed for days, slowly collecting pieces of a life she wasn’t fully ready to pack away.
Clothes.
Notebooks.
Chargers she kept forgetting she already owned.
And between all of it, moments she couldn’t pack at all.
Noah’s voice.
His silence.
The way he looked at her like he was already grieving something that hadn’t ended yet.
They didn’t talk much after the library.
Not because there was nothing left to say.
But because everything they tried to say kept turning into something heavier than either of them could hold properly.
So they existed in fragments.
A glance in the hallway.
A message typed and deleted.
A name almost spoken, then swallowed back down.
Noah tried to act normal.
He really did.
But normal had started feeling like pretending.
He watched Ava more than he meant to. Noticed how she laughed a little less loudly, how she seemed slightly further away even when she was right there.
Like she was already learning how to be gone.
And that terrified him more than anything she had ever said.
Ava, for her part, stopped trying to fill silence that didn’t want to be filled.
She used to be the one reaching first.
Now she waited.
Not out of pride.
Out of exhaustion.
There’s a difference between chasing someone and realizing you’re the only one running.
One afternoon, Noah found her at her locker.
She didn’t look surprised anymore when he appeared.
That was the part that hurt.
“You’re really going,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
Ava nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
A pause.
Noah swallowed. “When?”
“Next week.”
That landed differently when spoken out loud.
Next week.
Not someday. Not eventually.
Next week.
Noah leaned against the lockers beside her, like his body needed something solid to hold him up.
“I keep thinking about what I should say to you,” he admitted.
Ava closed her locker gently. “And?”
“And nothing sounds right anymore.”
That made her pause.
Because for once, they were feeling the same thing.
Just in different ways.
Ava turned slightly toward him.
“You don’t have to say something perfect,” she said quietly.
Noah let out a short breath. “That’s the problem. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say anymore.”
Silence.
Then, softer:
“I just don’t want to lose you like this.”
Ava looked down for a moment.
Because that was the truth.
Not dramatic. Not poetic.
Just real.
“You’re not losing me because I’m going somewhere,” she said.
Noah shook his head slightly. “It feels like I am.”
Ava met his eyes.
And for the first time, there wasn’t confusion in hers.
Only clarity.
“I think,” she said slowly, “we’ve been losing each other for a while now. We just didn’t want to admit it.”
That hit differently.
Not like an argument.
Like recognition.
Noah exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck.
“So what does that mean for us?” he asked quietly.
Ava hesitated.
Not because she didn’t know.
But because saying it out loud made it real.
“I don’t know what we are anymore,” she admitted.
Noah closed his eyes briefly.
Like he already knew that answer too.
The bell rang somewhere down the hall.
People moved around them.
Life kept happening.
But they didn’t move.
Not immediately.
Like they were both waiting for someone else to decide what came next.
Eventually, Ava stepped back.
“I have to go,” she said.
Noah nodded once.
Then, after a pause that felt too long to belong to nothing, he said her name.
“Ava.”
She stopped.
Didn’t turn fully.
Just enough to show she was listening.
Noah’s voice lowered.
“I hope Paris is everything you want it to be.”
Ava’s throat tightened slightly.
Because he meant it.
And that made it harder.
“Me too,” she said softly.
Then she walked away.
And this time, Noah didn’t follow.
Not because he didn’t want to.
But because he finally understood something he had been avoiding for too long.
Love wasn’t always something you held onto.
Sometimes it was something you had to watch walk away before you destroyed it completely by trying to keep it too tightly.
- Writer
