It was strange, how nothing about them had changed-and yet everything had.
Max still brought her coffee the way she liked it.
Still texted her when it rained.
Still showed up without being asked, like the timing between their hearts had never been off-beat.
But now... there was something different in the air between them.
She let him sit closer.
She let his hand rest near hers on the couch, their pinkies brushing, her breath catching-just a little.
She didn't move away anymore.
But she still didn't say it.
That Sunday, they spent the afternoon in her apartment, doing nothing and everything. Max sat on the floor, back resting against the couch, flipping through her sketchbook while Lydia sat cross-legged above him, watching his every reaction like it meant more than the drawings themselves.
"You never showed me this one," he said, pausing on a sketch of a boy sitting alone at a train station, rain blurring the windows behind him.
Lydia shrugged. "It wasn't finished."
Max looked up at her. "It feels finished."
She avoided his gaze. "Not everything ends when it's supposed to."
He stared at her for a long time. "Is it about someone?"
She hesitated. Then nodded.
"Someone who left?"
She shook her head. "Someone I never asked to stay."
His throat tightened, but he didn't push.
He never did.
Later, he made tea while she played a quiet old French song from her phone-one neither of them understood but both found comfort in.
When he handed her the mug, their fingers touched again.
Lydia looked up at him.
And in her eyes-God, in her eyes—it was there.
All of it.
The longing.
The fear.
The silent ache of someone who wanted to love out loud but didn't know how.
Max's heart beat louder than the song in the background.
"Lydia..." he said softly.
She looked away. Sipped the tea.
Changed the song.
That night, as he stood by the door with his coat in hand, she walked him out the way she always did. Barefoot, sweater sleeves pulled over her hands, eyes tired in that quiet, beautiful way.
"Text me when you get home," she said.
Max studied her face.
He wanted to kiss her.
He wanted to pull her into the truth again— remind her he wasn't asking for poetry or promises, just something real.
But instead, he said, "Do you ever think maybe the only thing stopping us is you?"
Lydia blinked, caught off guard. But she didn't answer.
He waited.
But when the silence stretched too long, he gave her a soft smile-the kind people wear when they're breaking-and whispered,
"I'd wait forever, you know. But I'm hoping I won't have to."
Then he left.
And Lydia?
She closed the door behind him, leaned against It..
...and cried.
Because he was right.
And she didn't know why she still couldn't say it.