THE DISTANCE
578 Words
Chapter 4
The airport was a blur of motion and noise—rolling suitcases, hurried footsteps, tearful goodbyes. Amara stood at the gate, her fingers interlaced with David’s, holding on as though her grip could anchor him here.
“Call me as soon as you land,” she whispered.
“I will.” His eyes were wet, though his smile tried to be steady. “This isn’t the end, Amara. It’s just the start of a harder chapter.”
She nodded, but her throat burned too much to answer. When the boarding call echoed through the terminal, David kissed her with the intensity of someone trying to memorize her. Then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd.
Amara stood there long after his plane had lifted into the sky, her heart split between pride and grief.
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The first weeks weren’t so bad.
David called every night, his voice buzzing through the phone lines across continents. He told her about the glass towers of London, the endless rain, the way the city seemed to pulse like Lagos but colder, lonelier. She told him about her paintings, her parents, the everyday rhythm of her life.
“I miss you,” he would say, sometimes more than once in a call.
“I miss you too.”
They promised to visit soon. They promised the distance would shrink.
But promises were fragile things.
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Time blurred. Calls grew shorter, sometimes skipped entirely.
“I’m sorry, Amara,” David said one evening, his voice tired. “The project ran late. I didn’t mean to miss yesterday.”
“It’s fine,” she whispered, though it wasn’t.
The time difference gnawed at them. Her mornings were his nights, his days her dreams. Messages went unanswered for hours. Video calls pixelated into frozen faces and broken words.
Still, they tried. Amara sent him sketches she’d drawn; he sent photos of buildings half-finished, their steel skeletons rising against gray skies. She told him stories of Lagos heat; he told her about the biting London cold.
But love felt different through a screen.
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One night, sitting alone in her apartment, Amara whispered into the phone, “What if love isn’t enough?”
There was a long silence. Then David’s voice, quiet, almost pleading. “Don’t say that. Please. You’re all I have left of home.”
Her tears spilled silently. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe they were strong enough. But even in his voice, she heard the distance.
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Months passed.
David visited once in December, bringing her a scarf that smelled faintly of London rain. They clung to each other during those two short weeks, making every moment heavy with urgency. They laughed, they kissed, they fought.
On his last night before flying back, Amara broke.
“I can’t keep pretending this doesn’t hurt,” she whispered, her hands pressed against his chest.
“I know,” he murmured. His forehead rested against hers. “But I can’t give this up. Either of them—you or my dream.”
Tears stung her eyes. “And I can’t stop you.”
When he left again, her apartment felt emptier than ever before.
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The distance stretched not just across oceans, but between their hearts. Calls became perfunctory. Messages turned into single lines.
And slowly, painfully, Amara began to understand: their fire was flickering, suffocated by miles and time.
But even as it dimmed, it never truly went out.
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- Writer
