There were days when everything seemed normal again.
Those were the most confusing ones.
We'd meet after class, fall into step easily, talk about something trivial—an assignment, a professor's habit, a place someone had recommended. She laughed the way she always had, leaning slightly toward me when she did. I laughed too, relieved without admitting it.
On those days, I told myself I had imagined the distance.
That this was just what growing up felt like.
That we were adjusting, not drifting.
Then there were other days.
Days where timing slipped just enough to matter.
One afternoon, I waited outside her building longer than usual. Students passed in small groups, their conversations dissolving into background noise. I leaned against the railing, checking the time, then deliberately not checking it again.
When she finally appeared, she looked flustered, distracted.
"Sorry," she said. "I forgot to text."
"It's fine."
She nodded, already moving. "Can we walk? I have to get to the other side of campus."
"Sure."
We walked quickly, conversation fragmented by her pace.
She talked about something that had come up during her meeting—plans, ideas, people volunteering for roles. I listened, but the words slid past me without settling.
At one point, she stopped mid-sentence.
"You're quiet again," she said.
"I'm listening."
"I know," she said. "It just feels like you're… somewhere else."
I wanted to say I'm right here.
I wanted to say I don't know how to follow you into that room yet.
Instead, I said, "You have a lot going on."
She smiled faintly. "So do you."
The comment lingered, unfinished.
That evening, we studied together in the library, sitting side by side like we always did. Books open. Notes scattered. The familiar setup should have felt grounding.
It didn't.
She checked her phone more than once, apologizing each time. I told her it didn't bother me, and she believed me—because I sounded convincing.
At some point, she leaned back and stretched.
"I think I'll head out early," she said. "I promised I'd help someone with something."
"Okay."
She hesitated. "You're not upset, right?"
"No."
She searched my face, then nodded, satisfied enough.
After she left, I stayed longer than I needed to, staring at pages I wasn't reading.
I wasn't angry.
That was what troubled me.
Anger would have been clearer. Easier to explain. What I felt instead was a slow accumulation of small adjustments—each one reasonable on its own, each one asking me to step aside just a little more.
We started missing each other in subtle ways.
I'd text her when I had a free hour. She'd reply later, already busy. She'd message me when she had time, and I'd be in the middle of something I couldn't easily leave.
It's fine, we kept saying.
And it was.
Until it wasn't.
One night, as we walked back from campus together, the conversation stalled somewhere between topics.
The streetlights cast long shadows across the pavement. Our footsteps echoed unevenly.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Of course."
She hesitated. "Do you feel like I've been… distant?"
The question caught me off guard.
"I don't know," I said carefully. "Have you?"
She frowned slightly. "I didn't mean it like that."
"I know."
"I just—" She stopped, then tried again. "Sometimes it feels like you pull away before I even realize I've gone anywhere."
That hurt more than I expected.
"I don't pull away," I said.
"I know you don't mean to," she replied quickly. "I just notice it."
I wanted to explain myself — the way I had learned to stay quiet when I didn't know where I stood, the way I waited for permission she didn't know she was withholding.
But the words tangled.
"Maybe we're just busy," I said instead.
She nodded, though her expression didn't entirely agree. "Maybe."
We stood there for a moment longer than necessary.
Then she smiled, carefully. "Let's not overthink it."
"Yeah," I said. "Let's not."
But that night, I did.
I thought about how easily she spoke about the future now—clubs, opportunities, things she might try next year. I thought about how rarely I appeared in those sentences unless I was already standing there.
I wondered when I had started measuring my presence that way.
A few days later, we argued for the first time.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
It happened over nothing.
I'd assumed we were meeting after her class. She assumed we'd reschedule. Neither of us said it out loud until it was too late.
"I thought you knew," she said.
"I thought we'd talked about it."
"We did," she said. "I just didn't think it was set."
I laughed, short and surprised. "Since when do we need to specify everything?"
She went quiet at that.
"Since things stopped being obvious," she said.
The words hung between us.
"I didn't know they had," I replied.
She looked at me then, really looked, as if trying to decide whether to say something else.
She didn't.
Instead, she sighed. "I don't want us to turn everything into a problem."
"Neither do I."
And that was the truth.
We walked together afterward, closer than before, as if proximity could undo the moment. Her hand brushed mine, tentative. I didn't take it.
I noticed immediately.
She noticed too.
Neither of us commented.
That night, lying awake, I realized how many conversations we'd almost had lately. How often we stopped just short of saying what we meant, trusting that the other would understand anyway.
We still cared.
That wasn't the issue.
The issue was that caring had begun to take different shapes for each of us, and neither of us knew how to describe the difference without turning it into something sharper than we were ready for.
We weren't moving apart.
We were moving forward at slightly different speeds.
And for the first time, I wondered whether love—quiet, careful, unnamed love—could survive without someone eventually saying wait.