Chapter Twenty: The Echo of Distance
The distance didn't arrive like a storm.
It didn't shatter glass or tear through walls.
It seeped in.
Quiet. Patient. Almost polite.
At first, I didn't recognize it as distance at all. I told myself it was life—his life—unfolding beyond the small space I occupied. Rowan was busy. Rowan had responsibilities. Rowan had a world far larger and darker than mine. Of course he couldn't always be there.
That's what love sounded like when it was trying not to panic.
The first change was so small it felt harmless.
His replies slowed.
Not dramatically. Not enough to accuse him of anything. Just enough to make me stare at my phone a second longer than usual.
Where he used to answer in minutes—sometimes seconds—now there were gaps. Half an hour. An hour. Two.
He's busy, I told myself, again and again.
Don't be needy. Don't be that girl.
But the man who once sent good-morning texts before I woke now replied in the afternoon. Sometimes at night. Sometimes not at all.
The warmth thinned out of his words. Messages that once carried teasing softness and quiet concern became stripped down to their bones.
"Okay."
"Later."
"Sleep well."
They were polite. Civil. Empty.
I reread old conversations like a fool, tracing the shape of what used to be there, wondering where exactly it had started to fade. I told myself I was imagining it. Love made people paranoid. Love magnified shadows.
Then came the cancelled plans.
The first time, I laughed it off.
A study date he forgot.
A walk by the river postponed because "something came up."
I even joked about it to Sophia, who raised a brow but said nothing.
The third time, the joke stuck in my throat.
A quiet dinner—something I'd looked forward to all week—ended with a text fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet.
Rowan: Can't make it tonight. Something came up.
No explanation.
No "I'm sorry."
No suggestion to reschedule.
Just… absence.
I stared at the message, my phone glowing cold in my hand, and waited. For a follow-up. For reassurance. For anything that sounded like regret.
Nothing came.
The silence afterward felt worse than the cancellation itself. It stretched on, hollow and unanswered, like a room where someone had walked out and forgotten to close the door.
Still, I tried.
I always tried.
I sent pictures of sunsets bleeding orange into the sky. I sent voice notes of Sophia's jokes. I asked about his day, his meetings, his moods.
I reached across the growing distance with open hands.
He met me with walls.
Short replies. One-word answers. Neutral tones that gave nothing back.
Aira: Is everything okay? You seem quiet.
Rowan: I'm fine. Just tired.
The tiredness never ended.
Days passed like that. Then more days. And I began to feel foolish for waiting for him to return to me when he was clearly walking away.
The final cut came on a Friday evening.
We were supposed to meet at our usual café—the one with the crooked wooden tables and the soft jazz music that hummed low in the background. The place where he once traced circles on my wrist while I talked about books, where he'd watched me like I was something fragile and worth protecting.
I arrived early.
I wore the soft green sweater he'd once said made my eyes look like summer leaves. I'd hesitated in front of the mirror, smoothing it down, telling myself not to overthink.
I ordered tea and waited.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
The tea grew cold in its pot. Steam faded. The warmth vanished.
I texted him.
No answer.
I watched couples come and go. Friends laugh. Hands touch casually across tables. Life moving forward without me.
An hour later, my phone finally buzzed.
Rowan: Won't be coming. Don't wait.
That was all.
No name.
No softness.
No explanation.
Just a sentence that erased me from his evening.
I sat there, frozen, surrounded by the low hum of other people's lives—their conversations, their closeness—and felt humiliation bloom so deep it burned my chest. The waitress approached, her eyes gentle and apologetic as she cleared the untouched cup.
"I'm sorry," she said softly, like she understood more than she should.
I nodded, unable to speak.
I cried in the taxi back to campus. Silent tears that slipped down my cheeks no matter how hard I tried to stop them. I wiped them away quickly, ashamed even of my own grief.
This was the cruelty I hadn't expected.
Not anger.
Not harsh words.
Not rejection spoken aloud.
But indifference.
It was the absence of care. The removal of effort. The quiet decision that I no longer deserved space in his time.
Days bled into a week.
The silence became something alive between us, thick and heavy. My pride wrestled with my heart. I wanted to ask him why. I wanted to demand an explanation. I wanted to know what I'd done wrong.
But another part of me—the part that still remembered waiting alone in the café—refused.
I stopped initiating.
I stopped checking my phone every five minutes.
I tried to fold myself back into my old life, but it no longer fit. I attended classes like a ghost. I laughed when Sophia teased me, but it felt hollow. Nights stretched long and sleepless, haunted by memories of his touch, his low laugh, the way his arm once felt like safety itself.
Then, on a rain-slicked Tuesday, I saw him.
It was completely accidental.
I was crossing the street, my coat pulled tight against the drizzle, when a familiar car caught my eye. I slowed without meaning to.
Rowan stepped out.
He wasn't alone.
A woman followed him—elegant, polished, the kind of woman who looked like she belonged beside him. Her hair was perfect, her posture confident. Her hand rested lightly on his arm as he held an umbrella over her head.
He was smiling.
Not the careful, restrained smile he gave the world—but an easy one. Familiar. Unburdened.
He leaned down to hear something she said, his body angling toward hers in a way that spoke of comfort, of routine.
The air left my lungs.
He hadn't seen me.
I stood frozen against the brick wall of a bookstore, rain soaking through my coat, my hair sticking to my cheeks. I watched them walk into a sleek restaurant, watched him hold the door for her, watched him disappear inside without a single glance backward.
That was the truth, then.
I wasn't a priority.
I wasn't even a complication.
I was a distraction—one that had lost its novelty.
That night, the pain was physical. A sharp, wrenching ache lodged deep in my chest. I didn't cry. I couldn't. I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment we'd shared, every word he'd spoken.
Had any of it been real?
Or had I been a project? A naive girl he'd protected briefly out of some twisted sense of responsibility, then set aside when things grew inconvenient?
I woke up with resolve as cold as the morning light.
I wouldn't beg.
I wouldn't ask for explanations he clearly didn't want to give.
If this was the end, he wouldn't see me break.
My phone buzzed later that afternoon.
His name flashed on the screen, sending a jolt straight through my chest. For a moment, instinct screamed at me to answer. To hear his voice. To take whatever scraps he offered.
I let it go to voicemail.
He didn't call again.
But an hour later, a text arrived.
Rowan: We need to talk.
I stared at the words, my thumb hovering over the screen.
The old Aira—the girl who waited, who hoped, who loved without armor—would have replied instantly.
This Aira didn't.
The cruelty, I realized, wasn't in the silence.
It was in the hope he kept dangling just out of reach.
It was in the we need to talk that promised confrontation but not comfort.
It was in knowing he held all the power to wound me—and was using it with quiet precision.
I didn't reply.
For the first time, I chose myself.
I set the phone down, closed my eyes, and let the door shut.
And the echo of his distance was the only thing left in the room.