When We Were Almost

THE SPACES BETWEEN

SARAH

There’s a strange kind of intimacy in silence.

The way two people can exist near each other, breathing the same air, walking the same halls, and yet never speak. That was us. Me and Alvin Reyes.

Almost.

I started noticing him more after that first day. Or maybe, I’d always noticed him and was just finally admitting it. He was in the library every Thursday after school, sitting in the far back corner where the sun slipped through the dusty blinds. He never brought textbooks—only a small black notebook and his headphones. Sometimes he wrote. Sometimes he just stared out the window, lips moving like he was reciting something only he could hear.

Once, I sat two tables away and watched his hand move across the page—fast, like whatever he was writing was too heavy to carry for long.

He never looked up.

---

At school, he passed by me often. Not in deliberate ways, but like fate kept folding us into the same spaces. He was at the vending machine when I forgot my lunch. Standing behind me in the hallway when I dropped my books. Sitting across the cafeteria when I looked up from my tray, and suddenly, nothing else on my plate mattered.

Always there.

Always just out of reach.

“Earth to Sarah,” Lily waved her hand in front of my face at lunch. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Mentally marrying Alvin Reyes. Do you take this mysterious, brooding boy to be your lawfully overanalyzed husband?”

I laughed, cheeks burning. “I’m not—”

“You are. And it’s cute. But seriously, say something.”

I stared down at my tray. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Because I’m scared.

Because I don’t know how to talk to someone who feels like a song I’ve heard in a dream.

Because when he looks at me, I forget how to exist normally.

“I just... don’t think he’d want me to,” I whispered.

Lily sighed. “You always think that about yourself. But what if, for once, you’re wrong?”

I didn’t answer.

Because deep down, I wanted to believe her.

---

The next near-encounter was in the art room.

I’d forgotten my folder and came back during lunch, thinking the room would be empty. It wasn’t. He was there—sketching in the corner, hunched over a pad of paper with his headphones in.

I froze in the doorway.

He didn’t see me.

I could’ve turned around. I should’ve. But I stood there and watched, barely breathing. He was drawing a girl—not me, but someone who looked almost like me. Hair falling the same way. Eyes carrying the same quiet weight.

Something cracked in my chest.

He looked up. Our eyes met.

Time slowed.

Then he reached up, pulled out one earbud, and for the first time... it looked like he might say something.

My heart forgot how to beat.

But a second later, a group of juniors burst through the door, loud and laughing, and the moment shattered. I stepped back, out of sight, before he could speak.

Coward.

That’s what I told myself for the rest of the day.

---

ALVIN

I saw her again.

Third time this week.

Why does it feel like the universe keeps pushing her into my orbit? Like it wants me to do something I don’t know how to do anymore.

Talk. Trust. Let someone in.

She stood in the doorway for a full minute, thinking I didn’t see her. But I always see her. I notice the way her hair falls into her eyes when she’s nervous, how she fiddles with the edge of her sleeve when she’s unsure. I know she smells like rain and citrus and something warm I don’t have a word for.

And she’s in my head.

Too much.

I almost spoke.

Almost.

But I never know where to begin.

And beginnings matter when you’ve been burned by every ending.