Midnight Shadows

~18~: : The Silence Feels Different

It started with minutes. Then it stretched into hours. And somewhere along the way, I realized that the spaces in between our conversations had become more familiar than her voice. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. At first, I excused it. Everyone gets busy. Life is loud, unpredictable, ruthless in the way it demands attention. I told myself that she was probably studying, or hanging out with friends, or maybe just didn’t have the right words yet. That was okay. But then it happened again. And again. And again.

I would send a text and stare at it, watching the screen like something might change. Like maybe the words I sent would start glowing, would demand her attention as much as she demanded my thoughts. Nothing. A minute passed. Ten. Thirty. Three hours.

She replied, eventually. Not with memes, not with jokes, but with answers to the very questions I had sent. But that almost made it worse. It was like she had seen it, considered it, then just… put it off. As if answering me wasn’t urgent. As if it could wait.

And when you care deeply for someone, you don’t want to feel like something that can wait. It wasn’t the lateness itself, not entirely. It was what the lateness represented. If I was truly important, wouldn’t she be eager to respond? Wouldn’t she hear the notification and smile, wanting to talk to me as much as I wanted to talk to her? My mind, usually disciplined, sharp with logic and reason, began to fray. What if she wasn’t feeling the same way anymore? What if the weight of our long-distance reality had started to wear her down? I hated these thoughts. I hated that my mind kept score. I would tell myself to stop. To be mature. To understand that people are busy, that silence didn’t always equal neglect. But when you love someone with your whole heart, silence doesn’t land softly. It crashes. It echoes. And with every unanswered message, it felt more and more like I was carrying something alone. I remember one evening in December when I couldn’t take it anymore. I texted Ulani, her best friend, and I didn’t even know why I did it. I didn’t have a speech prepared, didn’t have a plan. I just needed to say it to someone who might understand. "I don’t get it," I finally typed, staring hard at my phone screen. "I text, I try, and she’s just… slow. Like I’m not even there sometimes." The typing bubble appeared almost immediately. "Tarian," Ulani responded, "it’s not that she doesn’t care. She’s just… like that. She replies late to a lot of people. She’s busy most of the time, you know that." I read her message three or four times. It felt rehearsed, like a line she’d used before. Maybe she had. Maybe Calista had asked her to explain it to others before. "Yeah," I typed, "but I’m not a lot of people."

Ulani didn’t reply for a long while. And when she did, all she said was, "She loves you, Tarian. She’s just… not great at showing it the way you do." That both helped and didn’t help at all. Because love shouldn’t feel like a threat. I tried to rationalize it with memories. Tried to tell myself she was still the girl who once stayed up until sunrise on call with me because we didn’t want to say goodbye. The same girl whose voice had always been a comfort through the cold December nights, who made me believe I mattered even when the world felt distant. But those memories started feeling like old photos, slightly faded, slightly out of focus. Beautiful, sure, but distant. And I wanted her now, here, present. Not just echoes of a feeling we used to know. The breaking point wasn’t loud.

It was cold. We were texting late one night. Or rather, I was texting. She was replying late, again. And something inside me gave way. I didn’t yell. I didn’t curse. I just typed it: "Do you even care as much as I do?" There it was. The words sat on the screen, electric, terrifying. I could almost hear the way they might land on her end. The reply didn’t come for a long time. And when it did, it was sharp. "Tarian, that’s not fair." Not fair. Maybe it wasn’t. But I didn’t feel fair anymore. I felt tired. Tired of pretending it didn’t sting. Tired of overthinking every delayed reply. Tired of being the one who always reached first. We fought. Quietly, carefully, both of us holding back the real venom but still managing to leave scratches with every word. Her words cut, not because they were cruel, but because they were careful. Careful words always hurt more. They’re the ones that mean the speaker is protecting themselves, guarding, holding part of themselves back from you. I kept thinking about that. About the carefulness. About how it used to be easy.

The apologies came later. Both of us said the right things. "I’m sorry." "I didn’t mean to make you feel like that." "It’s just been stressful lately." "I love you." It should have felt better. It didn’t. The silence that followed wasn’t the comfortable kind anymore.

It was fragile. Like something might break if we moved too quickly. We FaceTimed. We laughed. But sometimes the laughter felt like it didn’t belong to either of us. Just echoes of who we used to be. Every once in a while, I caught her looking at me like she wanted to say something. And I wondered if I looked the same way back at her. We had resolved the fight, but not the feeling beneath it. That was the thing no apology could reach. The silence felt different now. It wasn’t the absence of sound. It was the presence of everything neither of us knew how to say. But the awkwardness didn’t stretch on for days, not even for one. It was only a few hours later that we both found our way back to each other. Like two people lost in a crowd suddenly spotting familiar eyes. Like we’d both stepped over something sharp, and now we were both holding the bandages. I never once thought about ending it with her. The thought never crossed my mind, not for a second. She was too much of a part of me. Even through the frustration, even with the doubts clawing at me, I never pictured a life without her in it. I didn’t need perfect. I just needed her. By that evening, we were back texting like we always used to, with those stupid little inside jokes only we understood. We FaceTimed, and the smiles were real this time, not stitched together from guilt or tiredness. I could see her eyes soften in that way they always did when she looked at me. I felt myself relax into it again. Maybe that’s love. It's not perfection, not constant reassurance, but returning. Always returning.

It wasn’t fixed. Not fully. There were still things we’d need to work through, still thoughts pressing against the backs of our minds, waiting for another quiet moment to rise up again. But in that moment, in that call, she was mine. And I was hers. And that was enough. Sometimes, silence isn’t absence. Sometimes, silence is waiting. And we were both still here. And the longer we stayed, the more I realized something about love that I hadn’t before, not just about love, but about us. Love isn’t just the moments when everything’s working perfectly, when replies are instant and smiles are easy. Love is also in the waiting. Love is in the irritation, in the uncomfortable silences that neither of you know how to fill yet, but stay anyway. Love is in saying, "I’m not going anywhere," even when you feel like you’re barely holding it together. And somehow, that made the whole thing beautiful again. Because she stayed. And I stayed. And staying, well, that’s everything.