Back home, distance settled between us almost immediately.
There were no more hotel tables, sun-warmed streets, bus rides, or rocks by the sea.
There was no longer a hand I could reach for when crossing the street.
All we had was a phone.
And, to my surprise, for a while, that seemed to be enough.
We made video calls.
Sometimes for hours.
We spoke in a mixture of languages, translated sentences for each other, showed each other little things from our surroundings, and laughed whenever the translation app turned something perfectly ordinary into complete nonsense.
Other times, we barely spoke at all.
We simply sat there, our faces illuminated by our screens, looking at each other.
That was all.
And strangely, it never felt like something was missing.
At night, our eyes would grow heavy with sleep.
We knew we should end the call.
But neither of us wanted to be the first to say goodnight.
Just one more minute.
Then another.
And another.
Sometimes we would say we needed to sleep, yet continue looking at each other, as though we were trying to memorise every detail of the other’s face for the hours we would spend apart.
One evening, we were both almost asleep, our eyes half-closed, still looking at each other through the screen.
I remember that feeling more clearly than many of our conversations.
The feeling that I could fall asleep peacefully if the phone simply stayed where it was.
If that familiar face could be the last thing I saw before closing my eyes.
I didn’t need words.
It was enough to know that somewhere far away, someone was trying just as hard as I was to stay a little longer.
Then came the affectionate names.
Words spoken in a language I didn’t understand, but was slowly beginning to love.
Some meant “my love.”
Others meant “my life.”
“My soul.”
“My breath.”
I learned them one by one.
I repeated them softly, stumbling over the pronunciation, sometimes trying several times before getting them right.
And every time I heard them, the distance seemed a little smaller.
It was strange how unfamiliar words could become so comforting.
How a language I hadn’t understood just weeks earlier could begin to feel like home.
Sometimes I received messages about how much we wanted to see each other again.
If the internet connection failed, we waited for it to return.
If I was taking care of my child and couldn’t talk, I found a moment later, once the house had grown quiet.
My life hadn’t stopped for love.
There were still responsibilities, chores, exhausting days, and mornings when I had to get out of bed no matter how little sleep I’d had.
But somewhere between all those things, I made room for us.
And perhaps that was exactly what made it feel so real.
We weren’t living in an endless holiday.
We were living two ordinary lives, trying to find a place for each other in every single day.
Messages arrived in different languages.
“I love you.”
Sometimes in my language.
Sometimes in the language I was trying to learn.
Sometimes in English.
It was something almost childlike, yet incredibly tender.
As though those three words needed to be spoken in every possible language, just to make sure they reached the place they were meant to reach.
We told each other about our days.
The little things.
What we’d eaten, what we’d done, what had exhausted us, or what had made us laugh.
It wasn’t a perfect story.
There were different schedules, work, tiredness, and small misunderstandings that the translation app sometimes made even more complicated.
But at the end of the day, a familiar face was waiting for me on a screen.
And somehow, that made everything else easier to carry.
I don’t know when I began looking forward to evenings more than mornings.
Maybe it was when I realised I no longer picked up my phone simply to check whether a message had arrived.
I picked it up because a part of my world was waiting there.
I had begun to believe that distance didn’t necessarily mean absence.
That perhaps it was a space two people could choose to fill together.
And we filled it with messages.
With laughter.
With glances that lasted until our eyes could barely stay open.
And with one simple promise I held on to every single day:
In October, there would be no screen between us anymore.
To be continued…
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