Part 2 of The Space Between Us:Where Rain Once Fell | Desire Lines
DL - It had been three weeks since that rainy afternoon when their paths crossed again. Livia still remembered the way his eyes softened when he said her name, as if it had lived quietly on his lips all this time.
She didn’t expect to hear from him again.
But then the email came.
Subject: If you're free
From: noah.lang@\_\_\_\_
Message:
“There's an exhibit this Friday. Photographs of forgotten cities. I thought of you.”
No signature. No pressure. Just an opening.
Livia stared at the screen for a long time before replying.
Her response was simple.
“I’ll be there.”
The gallery was quiet, like a cathedral of stillness. Each photo was a doorway: crumbling train stations, abandoned homes, peeling wallpaper that once held laughter.
Noah stood near the back, hands in his coat, eyes resting on an image of a rusted swing set surrounded by overgrown grass.
“It reminds me of time,” he said as she approached. “How it moves even when we stay still.”
She nodded, and for a while they said nothing.
Sometimes presence was enough.
They walked again after the exhibit, this time not in rain but under the orange hush of streetlamps. Their shoulders brushed lightly, intentionally unintentional.
He glanced sideways.
“Did you ever regret it?”
She knew what he meant.
“Not the choice. Just the silence that followed.”
He exhaled, a weight let go. “I wanted to reach out so many times, but I thought... maybe you were better without me.”
“I wasn’t,” she said softly. “But maybe I needed to learn how to be.”
Noah stopped. The street was empty, the city pulsing quietly in the distance.
He looked at her as if trying to memorize the moment.
“I don’t know what this is. I don’t want to label it. But I’d like to keep walking... with you.”
Livia smiled, not the kind that hides, but the kind that surrenders.
“I’m not asking for a map,” she replied. “Just the courage to keep following the path, even if it’s uncertain.”
They didn’t kiss.
They didn’t promise.
But their steps aligned.
That night, Livia sat by her window long after he’d gone.
She thought of the photographs.
Forgotten cities.
Abandoned places.
Not all ruins stay ruined.
Some just need someone to see the beauty in their quiet survival.
And for the first time in years, the space between them felt less like a distance, and more like a bridge.
📝 To be continued...