Between The Lines Of What Was (BOOK 1)

CHAPTER TWO: The Silence Between The Goodbyes

The next morning, I wake up early, before the sun comes up, and make myself a cup of barako coffee — the kind Elias used to drink. I set it on the table next to my notebook and sit down, staring at the blank page in front of me. I used to think writing was about choosing the right words, about crafting the perfect plot. Now I know it’s about choosing to look at the parts of the story I’ve been avoiding — the silence, the anger, the secret I’ve kept even from myself.

I close my eyes and think back to the day we met. It was a rainy Saturday in July, and I was at a poetry reading in a small café in Kapitolyo. I was reading a piece I’d written about the stars — how they’re always there, even when you can’t see them — and when I looked up, Elias was sitting in the front row, looking at me like I was the only person in the room. After the reading, he came up to me and said, “You write about stars like you know their secrets.” I laughed and said, “I just know how it feels to be hidden in the dark.” He smiled and said, “Then let me be the one who finds you.”

For a while, he was. He’d pick me up from work and take me to watch the sunset from the top of Antipolo. He’d write me songs on his guitar and sing them to me while I cooked dinner. He’d hold me when I cried about my dad, who’d died when I was eighteen, and tell me I was strong enough to get through anything. Those were the lines I wrote first — the pretty ones, the ones that made us seem like the perfect couple. But between those lines was a silence that grew bigger every day.

I think about my cousin Jake, who lives in Davao and works as a nurse. He told me once about a patient he’d taken care of — an old woman who’d spent fifty years pretending she was happy in her marriage, even though she’d loved someone else her whole life. “She told me the hardest part wasn’t the lie,” he said. “It was the silence between the words she said and the words she wanted to say. That silence ate her up from the inside out.” I used to think that was sad, but I never thought it would be me — the one letting silence eat me alive.

The silence with Elias started small. It was the way he’d change the subject when I talked about my writing, like it didn’t matter. It was the way he’d stay out late with his friends and not call, like I wasn’t waiting for him. It was the way he’d look at me sometimes — like I was a burden, like he was tired of carrying me. I’d try to talk about it, to ask him what was wrong, but he’d just smile and say, “Nothing’s wrong, Estrella. I love you.” And I’d believe him, because I wanted to believe him. Because believing was easier than facing the truth.

One night, we were sitting on the balcony, watching the stars, and I said, “Elias, do you ever feel like we’re living in a story we didn’t write?” He looked at me, his eyes dark, and said, “What are you talking about?” “I don’t know,” I said. “I just feel like… like we’re playing parts. Like you’re the man who saves the girl, and I’m the girl who needs saving. But what if I don’t want to be saved anymore? What if I want to save myself?” He was quiet for a long time, then he said, “I don’t know if I can be with someone who doesn’t need me.”

That was the night the silence became too big to ignore. I didn’t say anything back. I just sat there, staring at the stars, wondering when the man who’d promised to find me had become the man who wanted me to stay lost. The next morning, he was gone. The note on the fridge said “I’m sorry,” but it didn’t say what he was sorry for — sorry for leaving, sorry for making me feel small, sorry for not loving me the way I needed to be loved. I spent three years trying to fill in that blank, trying to write an ending that made sense. But the truth is, some blanks aren’t meant to be filled.

I pick up my pen and write: “The silence between Elias’s ‘I love you’ and his goodbye was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. It was the sound of my heartbreak, the sound of my dreams shattering, the sound of me realizing that I’d been waiting for someone else to write my story when I should have been writing it myself.” I stop and take a sip of coffee, and I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It’s not a sad tear — it’s a tear of relief. Because, for the first time, I’m not trying to make the silence go away. I’m trying to hear what it’s been saying all along.

I think about all the people I’ve known who’ve hidden their truth in the lines of their stories. Tita Liza with her box of dreams. Maya’s lola with her unspoken love. Jake’s patient with her fifty years of silence. We all do it — we write the pretty lines, we hide the messy parts, we pretend the picture is complete. But the real story is always between the lines. It’s in the silence, the anger, the fear — and the courage it takes to face them all.

I flip to a new page and write the first line of what I know will be the real story — not Elias’s story, not our story, but my story. “I used to think loving myself was a destination — a place I’d get to when I found the right person, when I wrote the perfect story, when everything in my life was neat and polished. But now I know it’s not a destination. It’s the very act of writing the next page — even when the words are hard, even when the story is messy, even when the only person reading is me.” As I write, I feel the weight of three years of silence lifting off my shoulders. I look out the window and see the sun coming up over the city, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. And for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m home — not in the apartment, not in the past, but in the space between the lines of what was and what’s yet to be.