Long Distance
1556 Words
Chapter Six: Long Distance
The first week without her felt unreal.
Maplewood Drive looked the same. The oak tree still stretched its branches over both yards. The fence still leaned slightly to the left where they had once tried—and failed—to fix it in middle school.
But the Miller driveway was empty.
No car. No open garage. No Emma climbing into the passenger seat with coffee in hand.
Liam hadn’t realized how much of his daily rhythm had been built around the simple fact that she was next door.
Now there was silence.
Senior year at Jefferson began without her.
Walking through the stone archway that first morning felt different. He was no longer the new transfer. He was supposed to belong now.
But the hallway seemed larger without her presence anchoring it.
He checked his phone before first period.
Emma: Just landed. NYC is insane.
He smiled despite the ache in his chest.
Liam: Don’t get lost.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Emma: Too late.
He could picture her—wide-eyed, exhilarated, stepping into a city that pulsed with movement.
He stepped into calculus instead.
—
Long distance began as adrenaline.
They FaceTimed every night that first week. She showed him her dorm room—tiny but buzzing with life. Her roommate from California who spoke fast and laughed louder. The view of a brick building across the narrow street.
“You can hear sirens all night,” she said, half thrilled, half exhausted.
“I can hear crickets,” he replied.
She laughed.
They told each other everything at first.
Her first subway ride. His first senior assembly. The way the city smelled like food and concrete and something electric.
He listened carefully, memorizing details, trying to insert himself into her new world through stories.
At Jefferson, people asked about her occasionally.
“Your girlfriend’s at Columbia, right?” someone from philosophy class said.
“Yeah.”
“Long distance. Brutal.”
He shrugged like it didn’t scare him.
It did.
—
By October, routines settled.
Her classes were demanding. Writing workshops that lasted hours. Guest lectures. Study groups that met late in campus cafés.
His own schedule intensified too. College applications loomed. Teachers pushed seniors harder.
They still talked.
Just not every night.
Some evenings she texted:
Workshop ran late. Rain check?
Or:
Midterm tomorrow. Call you after?
He understood.
He told himself he understood.
But sometimes he lay in bed staring at his phone long after midnight, wondering who she was laughing with instead.
The city moved faster than Cedar Ridge.
Faster than Jefferson.
Faster than him.
—
He visited her in November.
He saved money from the hardware store and booked a bus ticket.
New York hit him all at once—noise layered on noise, buildings that blocked out the sky, people who walked like they were racing invisible clocks.
Emma met him outside her dorm.
When she spotted him across the crowded sidewalk, her face lit up in a way that made everything else blur.
She ran into his arms.
For a moment, the city disappeared.
He kissed her, and it felt like the snow again.
Like the thunderstorm.
Like before everything stretched.
“You’re really here,” she said, pulling back to look at him.
“Yeah.”
She grabbed his hand and led him through campus, narrating everything—this is the library, that’s the café I told you about, that building is older than our entire town.
He watched her as much as he watched the city.
She moved differently here.
Confident. Fast. Alive in a way that felt amplified.
That night, they walked through Times Square just to say they had. Lights exploded across massive screens. Tourists pressed shoulder to shoulder.
“It’s insane,” he muttered.
“I love it,” she said.
He looked at her profile glowing in neon light.
And he knew.
This wasn’t a phase.
This was her becoming.
—
But the visit wasn’t perfect.
It was good.
Just… complicated.
He noticed how often her phone buzzed. Friends inviting her out. Study sessions forming spontaneously.
He noticed how she hesitated once when a guy from her workshop—Evan—joined them for coffee.
“This is Liam,” she said quickly.
Evan smiled easily. “Heard a lot about you.”
Liam couldn’t tell if that was reassuring or unsettling.
Later that night, back in her dorm room while her roommate was out, he asked lightly, “You two close?”
She frowned. “Who?”
“Evan.”
“He’s just in my writing group.”
“Just asking.”
She studied him carefully.
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
The answer came fast.
Because he did.
What he didn’t trust was distance.
—
When he left Sunday evening, the goodbye felt heavier than the arrival.
They stood outside the bus station.
“Christmas isn’t that far,” she said.
“Yeah.”
They held each other longer than necessary.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too.”
The bus doors folded open with a mechanical sigh.
As he took his seat by the window, he watched her grow smaller on the sidewalk.
This time, she wasn’t disappearing around a suburban corner.
She was dissolving into a crowd.
—
Back at Jefferson, winter crept in again.
He threw himself into applications.
State schools. A few ambitious ones. Nothing in New York.
When his guidance counselor asked if he wanted to consider Columbia, he shook his head.
“I want something… different,” he said.
It was the first decision he made that didn’t orbit her.
He didn’t tell her right away.
Not because he was hiding it.
But because he wasn’t sure how to explain that he needed space to figure out who he was without measuring himself against her skyline.
—
By January, the calls grew shorter.
Not intentionally.
Just naturally.
She was building a life.
He was building one too.
Sometimes they’d both be too tired to do more than exchange a few texts.
One night, after a particularly long day, he stared at her name on his screen and realized he didn’t know what to say.
Not because he didn’t care.
But because their daily realities were drifting into separate languages.
When they finally connected, she sounded distracted.
“I have to finish this draft,” she said. “It’s due at midnight.”
“Okay.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
The words were still true.
But they no longer solved the space between them.
—
The conversation that changed everything didn’t happen dramatically.
It happened on a random Tuesday in March.
He had just gotten an acceptance letter from a state university two hours away.
She had just finished a midterm.
They were both tired.
“I feel like we’re holding onto something that doesn’t fit anymore,” she said quietly through the phone.
He didn’t respond immediately.
Because he had been thinking the same thing.
“I don’t want to be the reason you feel tied down,” she continued. “And I don’t want to feel guilty for loving where I am.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said.
“I know.”
Silence.
The kind that holds history.
“I don’t regret us,” she whispered.
“Me neither.”
“I just don’t know if we’re growing in the same direction.”
There it was.
Not betrayal.
Not anger.
Just truth.
He closed his eyes.
“I think we loved each other exactly when we were supposed to,” he said slowly.
A soft inhale on the other end of the line.
“I think so too.”
Neither of them cried.
It wasn’t that kind of ending.
It was quieter.
More mature than either of them expected.
“I’ll always care about you,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“And I’ll always be grateful.”
He swallowed.
“Me too.”
They stayed on the line a little longer, neither wanting to be the one to hang up.
Finally, she said softly, “Goodbye, Liam.”
“Goodbye, Emma.”
The call ended.
And just like that—
The year he had repeated.
The transfer.
The sacrifice.
The kisses in snow.
They became memory.
He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, just like he had so many times before.
Only this time, there was no panic.
No desperate plan forming.
Just a quiet understanding.
He had loved her.
Fully.
Recklessly.
He had rearranged his life for that love.
And it still hadn’t been enough to keep their paths aligned.
But maybe that wasn’t failure.
Maybe it was simply growth.
Outside his window, Cedar Ridge sat unchanged.
Inside, he felt different.
Not smaller.
Not behind.
Just older.
And for the first time since he’d asked his parents for that transfer, he allowed himself to imagine a future that didn’t begin with following someone else.
The fence still stood between the yards.
But it no longer felt like a border he needed to cross.
It was just wood.
Just memory.
And somewhere in New York, a girl he once kissed in the snow was becoming exactly who she was meant to be.
And now—
So was he.
- Writer
