At first, the distance felt almost bearable.
Maya's phone lit up every morning with Adrian's messages - clumsy jokes about the strange food he tried, photos of the city lights that reminded him of her eyes, voice notes where she could almost hear the smile in his voice. She saved them all, replaying them when loneliness pressed too close.
But weeks passed, and the messages came less often. Calls ended with "I'm sorry, I'm exhausted" or "The time difference is killing me." Maya understood - or told herself she did. She tried not to count the hours between their replies, not to measure love in unanswered notifications.
On nights she couldn't sleep, she wrote him letters. Long, rambling confessions about how quiet the apartment felt without him, how her coffee tasted different in the mornings, how she caught herself reaching for his hand in the dark. But she never sent them. The words felt too heavy, too desperate, so she folded each page and tucked it into a box beneath her bed. On every envelope, she wrote the same three words: Far From Me.
Her friends told her she was glowing less these days. She laughed it off, but when she looked in the mirror, she saw it too. The girl who used to dream loudly now spoke softly, saving her fire for someone oceans away.
One evening, her phone buzzed. His name lit the screen.
She answered with a smile that cracked when she heard the strain in his voice.
"I can't talk long," Adrian said, the sound of city horns in the background. "Just wanted to hear you."
It should have been enough. It wasn't.
When the line went dead, Maya stared at the blank screen, her reflection in the glass staring back with tired eyes. For the first time, she wondered if love could survive being stretched so thin.