The Road Between Us

I remember the day you left, though I try not to.

It was autumn, and the leaves were the color of old fire. The air smelled like apples, woodsmoke, and something else I couldn’t name — maybe grief. Maybe goodbye. You didn’t say much. You never did. Just packed your worn green duffel bag, the one with the broken zipper, and looked out the window like the world outside had something better to offer.

Maybe it did.

I stood in the doorway, pretending I was busy tying my shoes. You walked past me, slowly, almost reverently, as though stepping out of a memory you hadn’t meant to make.

“Take care,” was all you said.

I wanted to reply. I wanted to say, “Please stay.” But pride is a cruel companion, and silence was easier than pain.

You left. I stayed.

Years passed. Some loud, some quiet. I worked. Slept. Paid bills. Wrote letters I never sent. Told myself stories about how you might be — on a beach, in a city, riding a train through a place where no one knew your name. It was easier to imagine you happy than to believe you thought of me.

But sometimes, at night, when the wind came through the cracks in the windows just right, I swore I heard you say my name.

One winter, I visited the old road between our towns. The road we once drove together on long evenings, music low, your hand draped lazily out the window catching the cold wind.

The trees still arched over it like a cathedral.

I stopped the car at the overlook where we used to sit — that curve where the valley stretched out below like a forgotten prayer. I stood there with a thermos of coffee, breathing the sharp air, hoping some echo of you still lingered in the stones.

It didn’t. But I stayed anyway.

A fox crossed the road. Quiet, graceful. Gone before I could lift my camera.

I took a picture anyway.

Do you remember the poem we wrote once, late at night? It wasn’t good — nothing rhymed. But we laughed for an hour, passing it back and forth like children hiding a secret. I still have it. Faded ink on an old diner napkin tucked inside my wallet. The paper is soft now, nearly translucent. Like everything else from then.

I’ve learned to keep things gently.

Time is a strange tide. Some days I forget the exact color of your eyes. Other days, I see someone on the street with your gait and I stop, heart racing, until I realize it’s not you. Just a trick of posture and shadow.

I wonder if you ever think of me when the rain falls hard against your windows. Or when the train whistles in the distance. We used to count them together. “That’s five tonight,” you’d whisper. Like the sound carried some secret code we never decoded.

I tried to love again.

Twice.The first time, she reminded me of spring. Always blooming, always reaching. But I was still winter. Still frostbitten where you left me. She left when she realized I didn’t know how to thaw.

The second time, I thought I was ready. We laughed. Cooked together. Talked about futures. But every plan felt like building a house on a frozen lake. Eventually, it cracked.

I let her go gently. She deserved warmth.

Sometimes I sit at the bus station, just to watch strangers reunite. Parents lifting children. Lovers kissing like they forgot the world was watching. Friends holding each other’s names like gold.

I wonder how many of them thought the distance was permanent.

I wonder how many almost gave up.

I wonder if they’d understand this ache.

Last month, I found one of your books at a secondhand shop. “To You, Always,” scrawled in your handwriting on the inside cover. I bought it without thinking, even though I already owned a copy. That night, I read your notes in the margins. You still argued with the author, just like you did in life. It made me smile.You never did like being told how to feel.

I’ve started planting herbs on the windowsill. Basil. Mint. Lavender. Something about watching small things grow in their own time feels holy. Like proof that healing isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s just roots working quietly in the dark.

I think you’d like that.

One evening, not long ago, I got a letter.

No return address. Just my name in soft ink. Inside, one sentence:

“Do you still wait on the road between us?”

I stared at it for hours. My hands shook. My heart did that terrible and beautiful thing — hoping against itself.

I didn’t write back. Not yet. Not because I don’t want to. But because I want to answer fully. And I’m not sure I can yet.

Because yes — I wait.

But I also walk.

I’ve learned to live with your absence like an old song I hum without noticing. I’ve learned that distance isn’t always physical. Sometimes, it’s the breath between two unsaid truths. The stretch of silence between “hello” and “I’m sorry.”

Last week, a woman in the coffee shop told me I looked peaceful. I thanked her. But when I walked out, I realized it wasn’t peace. It was surrender. A soft letting go of the things I couldn’t carry anymore. Of you.

Of us.

Not out of anger. Not out of regret.

But like a leaf falling from the hand of a tree that has done all it could.

Still, I walk the road sometimes. Not as often. But enough.

The trees still bend, the sky still opens in that endless hush.

Sometimes, I swear I hear footsteps behind me. Light ones. Familiar.

lf you ever come back — truly come back — I won’t ask why you left. I won’t ask where you went. I’ll just take your hand and show you the garden I’ve grown in your absence.

It’s not perfect.

But it’s real.

And there’s a chair for you.

If you want it.