The train station was loud with goodbyes — parents fussing over luggage, students clutching boarding passes, the metallic voice of announcements echoing overhead. Eli stood on platform 3, his duffel slung over one shoulder, his acceptance letter folded neatly in his back pocket.
Eastbridge University. A new city. A new beginning.
Across the tracks, on platform 5, Riven waited for his train to Halden.
They were only an hour apart now. Not the same university. Not the same dorm. But not worlds away either.
Eli watched Riven from across the rails — the way he stood with his hands in his pockets, chin tilted up like he was daring the world to blink first. His hair caught the sunlight. His eyes, when they met Eli's, were steady. Soft.
They couldn't reach each other. Not physically. Not here.
But they smiled.
A small, private thing.
The trains arrived almost at the same time — a rush of wind and steel and motion. Eli stepped on board, found a window seat, and pressed his palm to the glass. Across the station, Riven did the same.
For a moment, it felt like they were touching.
Then the trains pulled away.
The letters started that night.
Eli's first was written on the back of a receipt, his handwriting messy from exhaustion.
Riven,I miss you already. The dorm smells like old socks and ambition. My roommate snores like a dying engine. But I saw a bookstore today with a cat that sleeps in the poetry section, and I thought of you.Write back soon. I need your voice in my head.—E
Riven's reply came two days later, folded into a sketch of the riverbank where they'd last kissed.
Eli,I found a coffee shop that plays jazz and forgets to charge me. I think it's magic. My classes are intense, but I keep imagining you in the seat beside me, rolling your eyes at the professor's metaphors.I miss your laugh. I miss your hands.—R
They wrote every week.
Sometimes long letters, full of dreams and doubts and the ache of missing. Sometimes just a postcard with a single line:
Wish you were here.I saw a boy with your smile.The moon looked like you tonight.
Eli's handwriting grew sharper, more confident. Riven's sketches became more detailed — trees, hands, wolves curled beside boys with tired eyes. They sent playlists, pressed flowers, ticket stubs from concerts they went to alone.
They took turns visiting — weekends spent curled up in each other's dorm beds, walking unfamiliar streets, stealing kisses in libraries and train stations. Eli learned the rhythm of Riven's city: the quiet park bench where he liked to sketch, the bakery that gave him free bread when he looked tired. Riven learned Eli's favorite study spot, the vending machine that always ate his coins, the rooftop where he watched the stars.
The distance became a rhythm. A heartbeat. A promise.
Eli kept Riven's letters in a shoebox under his bed. Riven kept Eli's tucked into the pages of his sketchbook.
Sometimes they fought — over missed calls, over jealousy, over the ache of not being able to reach across the bed on a Tuesday night. But they always came back. Always wrote again.
They didn't know what the future held — careers, cities, the shape of adulthood. But they knew this:
They had chosen each other.
And they would keep choosing, again and again, across platforms and postcards and the quiet space between now and always.