Maya hadn't meant for it to happen.
It started with late-night study sessions at the library, a classmate who noticed when her eyes looked tired, who made her laugh when her chest felt heavy. His name was Daniel, and he was nothing like Adrian - steady, simple, always present. He never asked too much of her, never left her waiting by the phone.
One evening, Daniel walked her home in the rain. They shared an umbrella, shoulders brushing. At her doorstep, he hesitated, his eyes searching hers. For a breathless second, Maya felt the pull - the possibility of something easier, something safe. But when his hand almost touched hers, she stepped back.
"I can't," she whispered, guilt burning her throat. "My heart… it belongs to someone else."
Daniel only nodded, but the disappointment in his eyes followed her inside.
Half a world away, Adrian sat across from his colleague, Eva, at a crowded restaurant. She was sharp, confident, the kind of woman who seemed to bend the room around her. She listened when he spoke, laughed at his stories, filled the empty spaces that loneliness carved inside him.
When she reached across the table and touched his hand, just briefly, he didn't pull away fast enough. For a moment, it felt good - too good.
That night, he couldn't sleep. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, hating himself for the warmth he'd let linger, for the thought that crept uninvited: Would it really be so wrong, if love so far away was slipping out of reach?
Back home, Maya wrote another letter she wouldn't send. Her ink bled across the page:
"Every day, I'm fighting for us. Tell me you're fighting too. Tell me I'm not alone in this."
She folded the letter, added it to the growing pile in the box beneath her bed, and whispered to the silence:
"Don't be far from me, Adrian. Please."
But across the ocean, Adrian's silence stretched longer, and her words remained unread.