Work Text:
The airport was too bright for a night that felt this heavy. Fluorescent lights hummed above, a cruel contrast to the storm raging outside. Beyond the wide glass panels, rain spilled in relentless sheets, the kind that blurred the horizon until everything looked like it was fading away.
Maloi stood a few steps from the departure gate, her chest rising and falling like she’d just sprinted across the entire terminal. She hadn’t, but her heart had. Every beat felt like a desperate reach for time that was already slipping away.
She found her, of course she did. She would always find her.
Colet stood near the queue, luggage upright, passport clutched too tightly in one hand. Her shoulders were stiff, her face half-hidden by strands of hair that had slipped loose in the rain earlier. To strangers, she probably looked composed, but Maloi knew better. She always knew. The smallest tremor in Colet’s fingers betrayed her.
Maloi swallowed the lump in her throat and stepped forward. “Colet.”
The name came out like prayer, like surrender.
Colet turned, slowly. For a heartbeat, her mask faltered. Her eyes…red, tired, already brimming, met Maloi’s, and something inside both of them cracked.
“You came,” Colet whispered. Her voice was steady but her lips trembled.
“Of course I did.” Maloi’s voice was rough, uneven. She hated the distance between them, those few feet that felt like oceans. “I couldn’t let you leave without…” She trailed off, because what could possibly be enough? Without goodbye? Without begging? Without falling apart?
Colet shook her head softly, a trace of a broken smile. “This is harder because you’re here.”
“Then don’t go,” Maloi said, the words escaping before she could stop them. She took a step closer, close enough now that the space between their hands burned. “Stay. We can figure this out. Whatever it is, wherever you think you’re holding me back… we’ll fight it together. Please.”
Her plea hung in the air, trembling like her own voice.
Colet’s eyes softened, then hardened all at once. She reached out, not quite touching, her fingertips hovering close enough that Maloi could almost feel the ghost of their warmth. “If I stay, I’ll only hurt you more. You don’t deserve that, Maloi. You deserve to fly. To breathe without me pulling you under.”
Maloi’s laugh cracked. “Fly? Breathe? Colet, you’re the reason I ever learned how. Don’t twist this. Don’t pretend leaving me is love.”
The words hit Colet like a wound, but she didn’t flinch. Instead, she let out a shaky breath. “Sometimes love is knowing when to let go. Even if it breaks us.”
The boarding call sounded, sharp and merciless over the speakers. Passengers began to move, lines forming, bodies pressing forward. The world didn’t care that two hearts were fracturing in its hallways.
Maloi felt the ground tilt under her feet. Her voice dropped, fragile. “Then promise me… promise me this isn’t the end. Because I don’t know how to live in a world where it is.”
Colet’s tears finally fell, carving trails down her cheeks. She leaned closer, her words quiet, fierce, trembling against the storm of everything they were losing. “I’ll never let it be the end. Even if I can’t be beside you, I’m still here. Waiting. As long as there’s tomorrow.”
Her hand brushed Maloi’s at last, a fleeting touch, a scar pressed into memory, before she pulled away, dragging her luggage toward the gate. Each step was slow, heavy, a silent scream that neither of them voiced.
Maloi stood frozen, her palm burning where Colet’s fingers had grazed it, her heart replaying the promise over and over.
And when Colet disappeared into the sea of passengers, swallowed by the gate, by time, by the unstoppable tide of separation, Maloi whispered it back into the storm, her voice steady despite the breaking.
“As long as there’s tomorrow.”
The café smelled the same. Brewed coffee, rain-damp wood, the faint sweetness of pastries that never seemed to change. Maloi sat in the corner, fingers wrapped around a cup she’d long stopped drinking from. Three years, and still this place held ghosts.
When the door opened, the bell above it chimed. Maloi’s heart stuttered. She knew before she looked up. She’d know that silhouette anywhere, even after years, even after silence.
Colet.
Her hair was longer now, tied neatly back. She carried herself differently. Steadier, sharper, like someone who had been living a life Maloi was never part of. And beside her, slipping off a raincoat, smiling as she brushed droplets from Colet’s shoulder, was another woman. Maloi’s chest tightened so violently she thought it might break.
Colet’s gaze swept the café. For a moment, her composure cracked when their eyes met across the room. Her steps faltered. The smile she had worn for her wife dimmed, flickered, and vanished.
Maloi stood, legs trembling. “So it’s true.” Her voice was steady, but her hands shook where they gripped the back of her chair.
The other woman excused herself politely, giving them space. Maloi almost hated her for it.
Colet stayed frozen a few feet away, eyes wide, unreadable. “Maloi…”
“Three years,” Maloi said, every syllable edged with a grief she had no room left to hide. “Three years I waited. Every morning, every night, I held on to your words. ‘As long as there’s tomorrow.’ Do you remember?”
The silence that followed was deafening. Colet’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I remember.”
“Then why?” Maloi’s voice cracked. “Why come back with someone else’s ring on your finger? Why let me keep waiting, like a fool?”
Colet’s lips parted, but the words seemed to die on her tongue. She looked down at her hands, twisting the band that shone against her skin. “Because life kept moving. I thought—” Her voice faltered. “I thought you’d move too.”
Maloi’s laugh was sharp, brittle. “I couldn’t. You told me to wait. You promised you’d still be here.”
“I was wrong.” Colet’s eyes finally lifted, shimmering with regret that made Maloi’s chest ache more than anger ever could. “I thought waiting was love. I thought letting go was mercy. But the truth is… I don’t know if I ever deserved you waiting for me.”
The space between them trembled, filled with everything unsaid.
Maloi’s vision blurred, but she refused to let the tears fall. “I built my tomorrows around you. And now you’re someone else’s today.”
Colet flinched, her breath hitching like the words had struck bone. She reached out instinctively, her hand hovering just short of touching Maloi’s arm, just like that night at the airport. But she pulled back, fist closing around air.
“I’m sorry,” Colet whispered. “I never stopped loving you. But I can’t undo the life I’ve built now.”
Maloi’s heart screamed to shatter, to collapse under the weight of what could have been. But all she did was nod, slow and trembling. “Then this is it. No more waiting.”
For the first time in years, she turned away, her steps heavy but final. Behind her, Colet stood still, a figure carved from regret, watching the only love she ever truly had walk out the door.
And for Maloi, it was the end of a promise that had burned too long.
The night smelled of rain, sharp, metallic, like the sky itself had been wrung dry. Maloi sat on the cold bench outside the hospital entrance, her hands tangled in each other, thumbs rubbing raw against her own skin. The faint hum of fluorescent lights above and the echo of distant traffic filled the silence she couldn’t escape.
She thought the café was the end. That seeing Colet again, married, whole in someone else’s life was the final break. But when the familiar footsteps slowed near her, her heart knew before her mind could catch up.
“Maloi.”
The sound of her name, softened by the voice she’d never stopped replaying in her head, tore through her like a wound reopening.
“You’re still here,” Colet said.
Maloi kept her eyes forward, staring at the glass doors that slid open and closed as strangers walked in and out. She didn’t trust herself to look up. “You shouldn’t be.”
A pause. The shuffle of shoes against damp pavement. “I know.”
There was weight in those two words. A guilty acknowledgment, as if even standing there was a betrayal.
“Then why are you?” Maloi asked, voice flat.
Silence stretched between them, so thick Maloi could almost hear the words Colet was swallowing back. Finally, Colet’s voice dropped, quiet and aching. “Because I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
That made Maloi laugh, sharp and bitter. She tilted her head, finally turning to face her. “Do I look okay to you?”
And that was the mistake. Because seeing Colet’s face up close again, the rain-slick hair framing it, the ring glinting faintly under the hospital light, the eyes that still looked at her the same way they always had, it broke her all over again.
Three years, and nothing had changed in the way Colet looked at her. That gaze still felt like being chosen, like being seen down to the bone. And it hurt more now than it ever had.
“You waited,” Colet whispered. Not a question. A confession.
Maloi’s throat burned. “You told me to.” Her voice cracked, ragged. “As long as there’s tomorrow, remember?”
Colet flinched. She closed her eyes, shoulders tightening as if bracing for impact. “I remember.”
The bench was cold beneath Maloi, but her chest felt hot, suffocating. “I thought waiting was love. But it feels more like punishment now.”
“I never wanted you to suffer for me.” Colet’s hand twitched at her side, an old reflex. Maloi saw it. The urge to reach out, to comfort her, to close the space between them. But her hand curled back into a fist. She didn’t move closer.
“Then why does it feel like I’m the only one still bleeding?” Maloi demanded, her voice shaking.
The night answered in silence. The hum of the lights, the roll of a cart across the lobby floor, a nurse’s distant laugh. Colet said nothing.
Finally, Maloi stood. Her legs trembled, but she forced them to hold her up. She wiped at her eyes quickly, like erasing evidence. “I can’t keep living in the dark corners of your life, Colet.”
Colet’s eyes widened, her composure faltering. And then, softly, like it was tearing her apart, “Do you want me to stop loving you?”
Maloi froze. The question hit her harder than anything else. She wanted to scream yes, to free herself. She wanted to scream no, to keep the flame alive. In the end, the truth slipped out, ragged and raw:
“No. I want you to love me the way you used to. And that’s the one thing you can’t give me anymore.”
Her words hung in the night, heavy and irreversible.
Colet’s lips parted, but no sound came. Her eyes glistened, and for the briefest moment, she looked like that girl from the airport again…trembling, desperate, caught between love and loss.
Maloi turned, her footsteps echoing against wet pavement. She didn’t look back. Couldn’t.
But she felt it. The weight of Colet’s gaze following her, just like always. And in the hollow of her chest, an ache that whispered the truth she couldn’t kill.
This wasn’t closure. This wasn’t goodbye.
It was love, unended, unresolvable.
Open. Waiting.
Like a wound that chose never to heal.
The restaurant buzzed with chatter, the clinking of cutlery, the warmth of friends gathered after too long apart. Maloi sat at the far end of the table, forcing herself to laugh at someone’s exaggerated story about work. She wasn’t really listening. Her ears were tuned to one frequency only.
And there she was. Colet.
She was seated across the table, not directly, but diagonal, close enough that Maloi could catch the flicker of her smile when someone cracked a joke, close enough to hear her laugh over the noise. But far enough that they didn’t have to speak.
The space between them was crowded with plates and glasses, but Maloi felt every second of it. Like gravity was playing a cruel game, tugging her closer only to remind her she couldn’t reach.
When Colet’s wife leaned in to fix something on her plate, Colet murmured a thank you, soft and automatic. Maloi looked down at her drink. Her chest squeezed.
It was fine. This was fine.
But then the jokes shifted, and someone brought up an old story from years back, about that one road trip where Maloi had gotten them lost, and Colet had been the only one calm enough to read the map.
“I still remember the way she argued with the GPS,” one of their friends laughed. “Colet just sat there, eating chips like nothing was wrong.”
The table erupted in laughter. And instinctively like breathing, like reflex, Maloi’s eyes went to Colet’s.
And Colet’s eyes went to hers.
For a heartbeat, the room disappeared. They were back in that car, sunlight burning through the windshield, chips crunching, Maloi grumbling, Colet smirking quietly beside her.
The memory hit them both at once. And they laughed. Soft, real, the kind of laugh that didn’t belong to the present but to a past they’d never outgrow.
Their friends kept talking, oblivious. But the moment stretched between them, silent and loud all at once.
Colet’s smile faltered first. She reached for her glass, fingers tight around the stem. Maloi looked away, her chest aching.
Later, when the group dispersed and Maloi stepped outside into the night, Colet followed. Not too quickly. Not too close. But enough.
“You still hate GPS,” Colet said, her voice quiet, a ghost of a smile tugging at her lips.
Maloi turned, eyes searching hers in the dark. “And you still eat chips when you’re nervous.”
Their laughter spilled into the night again, smaller this time, heavier. And when it faded, the silence between them was worse than any noise.
“Maloi…” Colet’s voice broke, her eyes darting to the ground, then back up. “Why does it still feel like it’s just us? Even when it’s not?”
Maloi’s breath caught. She wanted to answer, but what answer was there?
So she whispered the only truth left.
“Because it always was.”
Neither moved. Neither dared. They just stood in the space between friendship and love, bound by a history they could never rewrite, and a future that didn’t belong to them.
The city was hushed, a late hour where even the neon signs seemed tired. Maloi leaned against the hood of her car, arms folded, watching her breath fog in the cold. She almost left. Almost.
Colet found her anyway.
“Maloi.”
Her name sounded like a prayer and an apology tangled together.
Maloi didn’t move. “What do you want, Colet?”
“I need you to know…” Colet stepped closer, the lamplight catching the faint shimmer in her eyes. “It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t even love, the way I told myself. It was fear. I was terrified of what loving you would cost you, the sacrifices you’d make, the doors that would close. So I convinced myself you’d be better off without me.”
Maloi let out a low, bitter laugh. “You don’t get to dress up fear as protection.”
“I know,” Colet whispered. “I know. But I thought if I left, you’d be free. I thought you’d run faster without me weighing you down.”
That broke something in Maloi. She pushed off the car, her voice trembling with fire. “Do you hear yourself? You were never a weight. You were the reason I wanted to run in the first place. And while you were busy saving me from a life I didn’t need saving from, I was here—paralyzed. Waiting for a door that never opened.”
Her voice cracked, but she didn’t stop. “I don’t want your fear, Colet. I don’t want your half-steps and your what-ifs. I don’t even want your explanations.” Her chest heaved. “I want my life back.”
Colet flinched, her lips parting, eyes wide and glistening. “So this is it?”
Maloi’s throat burned, but her words came steady, sharp. “You can keep your promises. I can’t keep living for the tomorrows you never came back for. From now on, I’m keeping what’s left of me.”
The silence that followed bled into the night, heavier than any scream.
Colet swallowed hard, her shoulders trembling, but she didn’t reach out. She didn’t beg. She only whispered, broken: “And if I never stop loving you?”
Maloi closed her eyes. The ache was too deep, too old. “Then that’s your cross to carry. Not mine.”
And with that, she turned, the sound of her footsteps echoing off the empty street, steady, final, and devastating.
Behind her, Colet stood in the lamplight, shattered by the truth she could no longer rewrite.
It had been six months since that night outside the hospital, since Maloi’s voice carved itself into me like a scar.
“You can keep your promises. I’m keeping what’s left of me.”
Six months of trying to live inside a marriage that already felt like an echo chamber. Six months of telling myself that if I buried the ache long enough, it would die on its own.
It didn’t.
Every morning, I woke beside my wife. Every night, I said goodnight with a careful smile. She wasn’t unkind. She wasn’t cruel. She was steady, dependable, generous in ways I didn’t deserve. But her kindness only deepened the wound, because no matter how hard I tried, I could not give her the one thing she wanted most, all of me.
I tried. God, we both did. We booked trips, weekends away by the coast where the air smelled like salt and freedom. We laughed over card games, we lingered in bed with books instead of words. We went to a counselor, sitting stiff in armchairs as if naming our silences would stitch them into something whole.
But the truth never changed. We were polite. We were respectful. We were companions. We were never home.
There wasn’t a day Maloi didn’t slip into my thoughts. Sometimes in the cruelest ways, her laugh echoing when my wife told a joke, her name almost tumbling out when I was half-asleep. Once, I even reached for my phone in the middle of the night, typing out a message I would never send. Are you eating well? Do you still hate rain? Do you still wait for sunsets, even when they don’t come?
I deleted it before the first word was finished. I had no right. I had a duty.
I told myself I owed it to my wife to be present. To stop carrying a ghost in my chest. But duty is a brittle thing when the heart refuses to obey. Every time I kissed her cheek goodbye, every time I held her hand across a table, I knew I was failing her. She must have known too.
One night, she set her fork down at dinner and studied me with tired eyes. Not angry. Not bitter. Just tired.
“You’ve been somewhere else for a long time,” she said.
I froze, guilt burning through me. “I’m here.”
She shook her head. “No, Colet. Not really.”
And that was the truth of it. I had never really been there. Not fully. Not when another face, another voice, another tomorrow had taken root so deep inside me that even six months of silence couldn’t uproot her.
We sat in that silence a long time before she spoke again.
“I don’t want to resent you,” she whispered. “And if we keep this going, I will.”
Her words cracked something open in me. Because I didn’t want to resent her either. She didn’t deserve that. She deserved someone who looked at her and saw forever. I only ever saw a life I was trying to convince myself into.
I reached across the table, my hand hovering before I finally let it rest against hers. “You’re a good person,” I said, voice breaking. “Better than I ever deserved. But you’re right. We’re making each other smaller. And we both deserve more than that.”
The next weeks blurred into a careful undoing: dividing books, sorting clothes, signing papers with steady hands and unsteady hearts. No screaming, no plates thrown against the wall. Just two people dismantling a life they had built with effort but never with fire.
The day I slipped the ring off my finger, the skin beneath it felt too bare, too vulnerable. I stared at my hand for a long time, whispering into the quiet, “One day. When it doesn’t hurt her anymore.”
But the truth pressed back, merciless, there hadn’t been a single day in all those months when Maloi wasn’t already there, haunting every thought, every breath.
And maybe there never would be.
The apartment was empty now. No second toothbrush on the sink, no coat hanging by the door that wasn’t mine. I thought the silence would crush me, but it didn’t. It left me room to hear the one truth I’d been burying for years, I had always loved her. I still did.
But love didn’t grant me the right to return. Not after everything.
So I watched from a distance. Not on purpose, at first. Manila is too small for ghosts you’re trying to outrun. I’d be crossing a street or ducking into a bookstore, and suddenly there she was… Maloi, hair tied up, laughing at something her friends said, her hands animated as always. She looked lighter than she had the last time I saw her. She looked… free.
Then came the day at the café.
The bell above the café door chimed as I stepped inside, shaking the rain from my jacket. The smell hit me first. Roasted beans, caramel syrup, the faint tang of something sweet pulled from the oven too early. I hadn’t been here in years, not since… her.
I should have left the moment my eyes found her.
She was in the corner, the same spot she used to choose back then, back when I’d sit across from her, pretending to study while she filled half a notebook with doodles and thoughts. Now she sat across from someone else.
He was kind-looking, glasses slipping down his nose, listening to her with the kind of intent you couldn’t fake. He leaned in, elbows on the table, as if every word she said deserved a place in his memory.
And Maloi… she was smiling.
Her hands moved as she spoke, tracing shapes in the air, her eyes glinting with that restless fire that used to undo me. Then he said something, I didn’t hear what, and she laughed.
For a heartbeat, I almost believed it. That laugh was bright, soft, full. But as it rang across the café, I felt the difference like a blade.
It wasn’t the laugh that left her doubled over in the middle of the street when I told her something stupid. It wasn’t the laugh that got stuck in her throat when she tried to hide it, only to burst free when I nudged her shoulder. It wasn’t the laugh that dragged mine out with it, like we were caught in the same gravity.
It was lighter. Prettier, maybe. But not ours.
I gripped the strap of my bag until my knuckles ached. People moved around me, ordering drinks, shaking umbrellas, living lives that didn’t crack open at the sight of one person in the corner of a room.
I thought of turning back, slipping out before she noticed me. But I couldn’t move. My feet rooted to the tile, my chest caught between pride and longing.
Her head tilted back slightly as she listened to him. She looked content. Safe. And I realized then that maybe this was what she deserved all along. Someone simple, someone steady, someone who didn’t leave her waiting at airports or burning with promises that never came true.
My throat burned. My heart screamed. But I forced the words out under my breath, so quiet only I could hear them.
“If she’s happy, I can wait. She deserves this.”
I left before she could see me, before the ghosts of what we were could haunt her table. Outside, the rain hadn’t let up. It hit my face in cold sheets, disguising the tears I didn’t let fall.
The bookstore smelled the same as it always did. Paper, dust, a faint sweetness from the café tucked in the back. I hadn’t meant to wander here. I told myself it was just another stop, just another distraction from the silence of an empty apartment for months.
But the shelves betrayed me. My fingers found the titles she once loved, the authors she used to underline in messy pencil. I traced the spines absently, as if touching the covers could bring me closer to the version of myself who used to buy them for her, wrap them in brown paper, and leave them by her door.
Then I heard her voice.
It floated over the aisle, light, teasing, exactly the way it had when she used to make fun of my taste in books.
“Seriously? You’re picking the thickest one just to look smart.”
I froze.
Peeking between the shelves, I saw her. Maloi, hair tied back loosely, her bag slung over her shoulder. She stood beside a man with kind eyes, easy posture who was laughing as he defended himself.
“What? I’ll read it. Eventually,” he said, grinning.
She rolled her eyes, that same exaggerated tilt of her head I knew by heart, but her smile lingered.
My chest tightened. She looked happy. Or at least, she looked like she was trying.
As they moved toward the counter, Maloi slowed by a display. Her hand hovered over a familiar title: The Little Prince. The same one I’d once given her with a note tucked inside: “For the girl that still waits for sunsets, even when they don’t come.”
Her fingers brushed the cover, paused, then pulled back. She tucked her hand into her pocket and walked on, her smile back in place.
I couldn’t breathe.
I turned before she could see me, before the past could spill out between us and ruin whatever fragile peace she had found.
The bell above the door chimed as I slipped out into the rain. My reflection stared back at me from the darkened window, tired, empty-handed.
“If she’s happy,” I whispered to the glass, “I can still wait.”
And I walked into the night, the weight of her laughter pressed against my chest like a wound I couldn’t stop carrying.
The months blurred after the divorce. Seasons marked themselves not by calendars, but by the places I caught sight of her. I wasn’t looking. God knows I wasn’t. But Manila is too small when you’re trying to forget a face you’d know anywhere.
Two months after the bookstore encounter, a friend dragged me to an outdoor concert. I told myself I needed noise, distraction. But when I arrived, noise was the last thing I found.
She was there.
Maloi sat cross-legged on a blanket, her partner beside her, tossing popcorn into his mouth as she laughed. She looked lighter. The kind of happy that stung to witness.
The band played on, and when an old song we once shared filled the air, I saw her body tense. Just for a moment. Her partner didn’t notice. But I did.
I left before the song ended. Some memories weren’t meant to be heard twice.
Almost a year after the concert, I ran into her again. Literally.
My basket nearly collided with hers as she turned the corner. “Oh, sorry!” she said, laughing in that nervous way she always did when caught off guard.
Then he appeared, steadying her with an arm around her waist. “You’re always crashing into people,” he teased, kissing the side of her head.
She laughed again, leaning into him. But when her eyes flickered up and met mine, the sound faltered. Just for a heartbeat. Then it was gone.
We nodded, polite strangers, and kept walking.
By summer, I had learned to expect it. That she would appear when I least wanted her to.
One night, I stopped at a red light, rain hammering down on the windshield. A car pulled up beside me. I glanced without thinking, and there she was.
Maloi, in the passenger seat, laughing at something on her partner’s phone. Her smile glowed in the traffic light.
Then her head turned. Our eyes met through the rain-streaked glass.
Her laughter stopped. My breath caught.
The light changed.
Her car turned left. Mine went straight. Two paths diverging, again.
The days folded into each other after that night at the stoplight. Work. Sleep. Groceries. Bills. The silence of my apartment no longer surprised me, it only hummed around me like an old ache I’d learned to live with.
I tried to fill it with little things. I cooked recipes I found online, even though I rarely finished them. I bought plants for the windowsill, convinced I could keep something alive, only to watch their leaves curl brown within weeks. I kept the TV on at night, not to watch, just to stop the quiet from swallowing me whole.
People asked me to join dinners, reunions, weekend trips. Sometimes I went. Most times I didn’t. I was polite, I laughed where I should, but inside I was somewhere else. Always somewhere else.
I told myself I’d made the right choice, letting her go, letting her live. But it was a lie I choked on daily. Because there wasn’t a morning I woke without thinking of her. Not one night I lay down without her face burning in the dark behind my eyelids.
I had tried to forget before, back when I was married. I thought restraint could do it. That if I buried her under enough duty, routine, kindness, I could suffocate her ghost. But she never left. She lived in the gaps, in songs on the radio, in books on the shelf, in sunsets I refused to look at because I knew she’d be there.
I poured myself into work, projects, deadlines, anything that asked for my time so it wouldn’t all be given to her. But even then… even in meetings, even on late nights at the office, one stray laugh, one phrase, one face in the crowd, and I was back where I started.
Waiting. Always waiting.
And the cruelest part? I didn’t even know what I was waiting for.
Her smile again? Her forgiveness? A world where our paths aligned instead of running parallel?
Maybe all of it. Maybe none of it.
All I knew was this: no matter how many months passed, no matter how many times I told myself I had no right, I couldn’t stop hoping that one day I’d see her not by accident, not across a café or a passing car but standing in front of me, with no one else between us.
The nights had all blurred lately, the kind where silence crawled into the apartment with me, where even the glow of the TV couldn’t fill the hollow. I lived in fragments, plants that died too quickly, dinners I barely tasted, weekends I spent wandering the city to keep from counting the hours.
And then the rain came.
Not a drizzle, not the kind you could walk through, but a sudden storm that turned streets into rivers. I sprinted the last stretch and ducked under the awning of a convenience store, shaking water from my sleeves. The hum of the fluorescent light overhead mixed with the roar of the storm, wrapping the world in static.
I wasn’t alone for long.
“Of course,” came a voice, rushed with breath, familiar enough to stop my pulse.
Maloi.
She stumbled under the awning, hair dripping, bag clutched to her chest. She froze when she saw me, and the storm suddenly wasn’t the loudest thing anymore.
“Colet.”
Her voice was soft, steady, as if she’d rehearsed it in her head a hundred times.
“Maloi,” I answered, my chest tight around her name.
She gave a small laugh, shaking rain from her sleeve. “You always did find the worst weather.”
I almost smiled. “Or maybe it finds me.”
The silence stretched, but it wasn’t the old kind, not sharp with things unsaid, not swollen with anger. Just… tentative. Two people learning the shape of each other again.
“You look well,” she said at last, her tone even, kind. Not the brittle kindness of before, but something steadier.
“So do you,” I replied. And it was true. There was a lightness in her face, a calm I hadn’t seen in years. She’d healed. We both had, in ways the other couldn’t have managed for us.
We stood side by side, watching rain sweep the street clean. For the first time in a long time, I felt like we weren’t running, not from each other, not from the past. Just… standing. Breathing.
“I heard,” Maloi said finally, her voice quiet but certain.
I turned. “Heard what?”
Her eyes met mine, unwavering. “About the divorce.”
The words struck like a bell. For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. “Who told you?”
“A friend. Doesn’t matter who.” She shifted her bag higher on her shoulder, her gaze piercing. “What matters is, why didn’t you tell me?”
My throat tightened. “Because I didn’t want you to think it was because of you.”
Her brows knit.
“It wasn’t,” I continued, steady but raw. “It was all me. My choices, my failures. I couldn’t give her what she deserved, and dragging it out would’ve only broken us both more. I didn’t leave for you, Maloi. I left because it was the only honest thing left to do.”
The rain pressed closer, louder, but her silence was heavier.
“And me?” she asked softly. “Was I not worth telling?”
I shook my head quickly, my voice breaking. “No. You were worth too much. If I’d told you, it would’ve felt like I was asking you to wait again. And I had no right to ask that of you.”
Her breath caught. For a long moment, she just looked at me, not with the anger I feared, but with something far more dangerous. Understanding.
She gave a small, bitter laugh. “You really think you get to decide what I can carry and what I can’t?”
I didn’t know what to say.
The silence filled with rain, the hum of neon lights, and the beating of my own heart. She shifted, her shoulders softening, her expression breaking open.
“I tried,” she admitted, her voice trembling now. “I dated. I laughed. I lived. But every time, I caught myself waiting for the laugh that felt like yours. It never came.”
The words tumbled out before she could stop them, her hand tightening around her bag strap. Her eyes glistened, not with grief this time, but with something closer to surrender.
I froze, the storm roaring in my ears. Because for the first time in years, it wasn’t just me.
We weren’t ghosts anymore.
We were here. Now.
When the storm finally softened to a drizzle, we didn’t move right away. We just stood there, side by side, letting the silence soak into us. My chest was still echoing with her words, “It never came.”
The world felt fragile, like if either of us spoke too loud it would shatter.
“Come on,” Maloi said suddenly, her voice gentle but firm. She tilted her head toward the street, rain still glistening on her lashes. “There’s a café down the block. You’re soaked. Let’s go before you catch something.”
For once, I didn’t argue.
The café was nearly empty, just the soft hum of music and the hiss of an espresso machine. Warm light pooled across wooden tables, catching the steam rising from our cups. It felt like stepping into another world. Quieter, slower, untouched by the storm outside.
Maloi sat across from me, her hair still damp, strands clinging stubbornly to her cheeks. She didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she didn’t care.
We talked at first about nothing. The weather, work, the little things that fill silences. But under it all was the weight of everything we hadn’t said in years.
Finally, she leaned back, cradling her cup between her hands. “I used to come here a lot. After you left. Sat in that corner.” She nodded toward the back. “Told myself if I sat long enough, maybe you’d walk in.”
My throat tightened. “I thought about it. So many times.”
Her lips curved into the faintest smile, but her eyes glistened. “Why didn’t you?”
I swallowed. “Because I wasn’t ready. Because I thought waiting was the only thing I could give you. And because I was terrified that if I saw you again, I’d never be able to let go.”
She was quiet for a long moment, studying me, like she was seeing past every layer I had built to survive without her.
Then, softly, “So don’t.”
The words hit me harder than any storm.
“Don’t let go,” she said again, firmer now, her eyes locked on mine. “Not this time. I’m done pretending I can move on. Done pretending I can build a life without you in it. I tried. God, I tried. But every road still led back here. To you.”
Something in me broke then, but it didn’t hurt. It felt like relief. Like air rushing back into my lungs after years underwater.
I reached across the table before I could stop myself, my hand covering hers. Warm, solid, real. Her fingers trembled, then curled into mine like they’d been waiting all this time.
“Maloi,” I whispered, my voice unsteady. “Are you sure?”
She smiled through tears, the kind of smile that was half broken, half whole. “I’ve never been more sure of anything. You can keep your promises, Colet. But I’m keeping what’s left of me, and I want to give it to you.”
The café around us faded. The storm outside no longer mattered. It was just us. Hands clasped, hearts breaking open, finding their way back after everything.
And for the first time in years, I let myself believe.
That maybe this time, tomorrow wouldn’t mean waiting.
It would mean beginning.
The days after that night in the café felt strange. Not like a miracle, not like a dream, but like slipping into clothes I hadn’t worn in years. Familiar, warm, a little frayed at the edges.
We didn’t announce anything. Didn’t rush. It wasn’t that kind of love anymore. We’d already burned ourselves once on fire that ran too hot. Now it was about light, steady and quiet.
Maloi started small. She’d text me good morning, sometimes with a photo of her coffee or the sky outside her office. I found myself waiting for it, smiling like a fool when my phone buzzed. I replied with clumsy emojis, still unsure of how to fit myself back into her days.
One night, she called while walking home in the rain. “Don’t laugh,” she said, breathless, “but I bought an umbrella. Because of you.”
I laughed anyway, the sound spilling out of me before I could stop it. “Guess some things can change.”
Another time, we cooked together in her apartment. She burned the garlic, I over-salted the pasta, and we ended up ordering pizza instead, eating straight from the box on her living room floor. She leaned back, wiping sauce from her lip with the back of her hand, and said, “This feels stupidly perfect.”
And it did. Perfect in its imperfection.
But it wasn’t all laughter. Some nights, silence pressed in, reminders of the years we’d lost, the lives we’d lived apart. Once, I caught her staring at the scar of my old wedding ring mark, and for a moment, the air between us went cold.
“We’ll get there,” she whispered eventually, reaching for my hand. “We don’t have to rush.”
Her thumb traced my skin, and the warmth came back.
It wasn’t the grand gestures, the declarations, that made me believe. It was the little things: the way she listened when I spoke, the way she still teased me when I frowned too much, the way my name sounded in her mouth after years of silence.
And for the first time, “tomorrow” didn’t feel like a promise I couldn’t keep. It felt like something we were building, one quiet day at a time.
When she asked me to dinner, I froze.
“Just a few friends,” she said, her tone light, almost casual. But her voice carried that undercurrent I knew too well, the one that always held more than her words. “You don’t have to talk much. Just… come.”
I almost said no. Too many years, too many ghosts. The thought of walking into a room where everyone still remembered the us that used to be, it made my chest tighten.
But then she laughed softly, as if she could hear the hesitation through the line. “It’s nothing serious, Colet. Just dinner.”
And that was how she got me. Because with Maloi, even just dinner had always been everything.
So, I said yes anyway.
The restaurant was noisy, warm, filled with the clatter of plates and the rise and fall of laughter. Old friends sat around the table, faces that hadn’t aged as much as I thought they would, voices that snapped me right back into years I’d tried to bury.
And there she was. Maloi, seated across the table, not directly in front of me but close enough that I could catch her smile through the noise.
At first, we kept our distance. She asked someone about work, I asked someone else about family. But it was inevitable. The conversation turned to another old road trip, and someone laughed about the way I’d misread the map.
“She didn’t misread it,” Maloi corrected, instinctively. “She just—”
“—ignored it,” I finished, at the exact same moment.
The table erupted in laughter. My cheeks warmed, but when I glanced up, Maloi was looking right at me, grinning like no time had passed at all. For a heartbeat, it was the two of us in that car again, sun glaring through the windshield, her laugh spilling out like music.
I looked away first, sipping my drink to steady myself.
Later, after the goodbyes and the teasing and the claps on the back, Maloi walked beside me into the cool night air. The streets were slick from earlier rain, streetlights scattering gold across puddles.
She carried something small in her hand, folded tight. When we reached the corner, she flicked it open.
An umbrella.
I blinked, surprised, then let out a quiet laugh. “You? Carrying an umbrella?”
Her cheeks colored, but she met my gaze, steady. “Yeah, the one I bought because of you.”
The words landed in my chest with a force I wasn’t prepared for. Something inside me softened, gave way.
She tilted it so we both fit beneath, though it was too small, and our shoulders brushed as we walked. Every step made the contact deliberate, inescapable, like the city itself had conspired to close the space between us.
I stole a glance at her. She was smiling, faint but real, her eyes focused forward. My hand twitched at my side, aching with the old reflex to reach for hers.
Instead, I whispered, half to myself: “Guess some things do change.”
Her smile widened, just enough to make my heart ache with the reminder that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow wasn’t something to fear anymore.
It happened on an ordinary evening. The kind with leftover takeout on the counter, the hum of the fan in the background, and Maloi sprawled on my couch, scrolling her phone with one hand and stealing the blanket with the other.
I was washing dishes when she suddenly spoke.
“Do you ever think,” she said, voice quieter than the clinking plates, “that we wasted too much time?”
I froze, water running over my hands.
Turning, I found her watching me, phone abandoned, blanket pulled to her chin like armor.
“Sometimes,” I admitted, drying my hands slowly. “Sometimes I think I wasted your best years.”
Her eyes softened. She shook her head. “They weren’t wasted. They were ours. Even the waiting, it made me sure of this.”
Her words pressed into me, heavy and healing all at once.
Later, I nicked my finger opening a packet. She scolded me, dragged me to sit, and bandaged it with the focus of a surgeon. The sting faded under her touch.
“Still reckless,” she muttered.
“Still bossy,” I teased back.
And then she leaned her head against my shoulder, sighing like it was the most natural thing in the world. My body stilled, then softened into hers.
For a long time, neither of us spoke. Just the weight of her against me, the warmth of her breath against my collar.
I looked down at her closed eyes, at the way she trusted me enough to fall asleep here, in this moment, after everything.
And I whispered into her hair, too quiet for her to hear.
“I could get used to this again.”
Weeks later, the pier was nearly empty when we arrived, the boards creaking softly beneath our steps. The sun was lowering itself into the horizon, bleeding orange and violet across the water. The kind of sky you couldn’t photograph, only hold in memory.
We sat on a bench, shoulders brushing, the silence between us no longer heavy but calm.
“I stopped waiting for sunsets when you left,” Maloi said, her voice quiet, steady. “They didn’t mean anything anymore.”
My chest clenched. “Maloi”
She turned toward me, eyes catching the fading light. “But now I think… I’ll wait again. With you.”
Something inside me cracked open. The years apart, the nights alone, the promises that once felt like shackles, all of it unraveled at her words.
I reached for her hand, threading my fingers through hers. This time, she didn’t hesitate. Her grip tightened, solid, certain.
“No more waiting,” I whispered. My voice trembled, but it carried. “Just tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.”
Her smile wavered, breaking into something both fragile and fierce. “You sure you can handle that much of me?”
I laughed softly, shaking my head. “I’ve been handling the absence of you for years. Having the real thing can’t possibly be harder.”
She leaned in then, forehead brushing mine, her breath warm against my lips. The world hushed around us… the waves, the breeze, even the fading light.
And when her lips found mine, it wasn’t desperate. It wasn’t rushed. It was soft, reverent, like we were learning each other all over again. A promise sealed not in fire, but in quiet certainty.
When we pulled back, her cheeks flushed, Maloi laughed lightly. “So… tomorrow?”
I kissed her knuckles, holding them against my lips. “Tomorrow,” I said. “And every one after that.”
The last of the sun slipped beneath the horizon, painting us in twilight. And for the first time in years, I didn’t fear the dark. Because beside me, her hand in mine, was proof that the light would always return.
“As long as there’s tomorrow,” I whispered, “we’ll be there.”