CHAPTER 20: The space between
428 Words
The distance didn’t announce itself.
It settled quietly, like dust on furniture no one touched anymore.
Valeria noticed it in the pauses between messages. In the way Tomás no longer reached for her automatically when they stood side by side. Nothing had ended—but something had shifted, and the absence of certainty felt heavier than any argument.
She filled her days deliberately. Work ran longer. Errands multiplied. Even the gym became more task than refuge. She avoided looking for Tomás at first, then stopped avoiding altogether, letting coincidence decide.
Coincidence didn’t.
The letter arrived on a Thursday morning. Another envelope. Another carefully worded reminder that her life was no longer entirely hers to organize.
Court hearing scheduled. Mandatory presence.
Valeria sat at the kitchen table, the paper trembling slightly in her hands. Mediation had failed to simplify anything. Now there would be decisions made by strangers who would never know the weight of any of it.
That afternoon, Lucía received a call she had been both expecting and dreading.
Her landlord wanted an answer. Renew or vacate. No more extensions. No more understanding smiles.
Lucía looked around the apartment—Mateo’s backpack by the door, toys scattered across the floor, traces of a life she had fought to legitimize.
“I need time,” she said into the phone.
“You’ve had time,” came the reply.
She hung up slowly, heart pounding.
Across the city, Valeria sat in her car outside the school, watching parents gather their children, laughter spilling easily into the air. She thought of Tomás. Of the conversation left unfinished. Of the space neither of them had known how to cross.
She didn’t call him.
Instead, she drove to the gym.
Tomás was there, adjusting equipment, his posture familiar enough to hurt. Their eyes met briefly—acknowledgment without approach.
Later, as Valeria finished her workout, he finally spoke.
“You okay?”
She hesitated. “I got a court date.”
He nodded slowly. “That explains the tension.”
They stood there, words pressing at the edges of silence.
“I don’t want to add weight to your life,” Tomás said finally.
Valeria felt something twist sharply in her chest. “You’re not weight,” she replied. “You’re… consequence.”
The honesty startled them both.
That night, alone again, Valeria lay awake listening to the house settle around her. She thought of all the spaces she was trying to hold—mother, woman, partner, self.
The space between wasn’t empty.
It was full of decisions waiting to be made.
- Writer
