Part 6 of The Space Between Us: The Words We Save | Desire Lines
DL - Some conversations don’t happen out loud.
They sit inside people, quietly, heavily, waiting for the right moment.
For weeks, Livia and Noah had been steady.
They cooked together. Fell asleep on the couch. Laughed at things only they seemed to find funny.
The silence between them had turned soft again.
But words, unsaid ones, lingered between breaths.
One Sunday morning, while folding laundry, Livia paused.
She was holding his hoodie. The one he wore on the night it rained.
She turned to him.
“Noah,” she said, “Can I ask you something... without you overthinking it?”
He looked up from the floor. “Always.”
She sat beside him, the hoodie on her lap like a fragile question.
“Why me?” she asked. “After all that time apart. After Mia. After everything.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
He leaned back, arms behind his head, eyes on the ceiling like he was looking for constellations in plaster.
“You were never the easiest choice,” he said at last. “But you were the realest.”
Livia blinked.
“You didn’t fit into the plans I thought I wanted,” he continued. “But you made me question all the ones I made without my heart involved.”
That night, Livia wrote in the notebook Noah gave her.
It was the first time she’d written more than a few scattered thoughts.
She wrote:
“Sometimes we love someone not because they complete us,
but because they open parts of us we didn’t know we had to grow into.”
She didn’t show him the page.
But she placed the notebook under his pillow when she left for work the next morning.
Later that day, Noah messaged her.
A photo of the notebook page.
And below it, his reply:
“Then I hope I keep opening doors in you,
and that you’ll keep letting me stay inside the rooms.”
Livia stared at her phone, heart quiet and full.
Sometimes, love is not a grand declaration.
Sometimes, it’s a few saved words
and someone willing to read them when you're not brave enough to say them aloud.
To be continued...
Next Chapter: “If We Stay”