The Space Between

Almost and Always

They never said it out loud. But the space between them said everything.

Part I - Almost

He handed her the mug with both hands, like it might slip if he let go too soon. She didn’t say thank you. Just held it, warm between her fingers, and took a sip like it meant something.

They were like that — gentle with things they didn’t know how to name. On paper, they were friends. But in practice, they lived in parentheses. Too close for casual, too careful for anything else.

The couch had just enough room for two, but they sat like it held three. His arm draped behind her, not touching. Her breath caught when she leaned forward, then let it go when he didn’t move closer.

“You always show up late,” she said.

“You always wait,” he answered.

She looked away but didn’t move.

The wind stirred the curtains like fingers in a lover’s hair. Outside, the garden glistened with new rain, and she thought not of him, but of the way silence can fill a room with more than sound ever could.

He wasn’t handsome in the way movies wanted him to be. But the way he listened? That made her stay. That, and how he never touched her coffee, even when she forgot it on his side of the table.

Sometimes, she caught him looking at her the way people look at art they aren’t sure they’re allowed to touch.

And sometimes, she looked back.

But only sometimes.

Part II - Always

Space stretched between them like an unspoken language. Not empty, but breathing.

It lived in the pause before a word, the slight distance they kept even when close. In the way their hands hovered near the mug but never touched the same spot. The quiet gap on the couch, wide enough to keep the world at bay, but narrow enough to feel connected.

It moved through the light filtering in — soft, fragmented, flickering across the room.

It echoed in the rhythm of their separate breaths, in the way time slowed just enough to hold everything they wouldn’t say.

It held the weight of years spent building trust without rushing toward more. The respect for boundaries drawn but never broken. The comfort of presence without possession. Affection without demand. A care so constant, it didn’t need proof.

The space was never empty.

It held everything they didn’t need to say.

Everything they weren’t ready to.

Everything that lived quietly, waiting.

As always.