Romance Novel: The Trace of a Feeling

Chapter 8 – The Distance

After that night in the café, things changed. Not drastically, not with loud words or final goodbyes, but with the quiet shift of silence.

Aruna still answered Adrian’s messages, but slower than before. She still agreed to meet, but with excuses about deadlines and fatigue that grew more frequent. When they did see each other, her smile was there, but it was thinner, careful.

Adrian noticed every detail. The way she avoided his gaze a second too long, the way her laughter felt lighter, as if forced. It was as though she had built a wall overnight, not to shut him out completely, but to keep him at a distance where he couldn’t touch the most fragile parts of her.

One afternoon, Adrian waited at Lentera Senja. Their table by the window felt emptier than usual, his coffee cooling untouched. He glanced at the door with the same hope he had carried since the first day he met her. She arrived late, her steps hurried, an apology already on her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting down quickly. “I almost canceled. Work’s been… overwhelming.”

Adrian studied her face. There were shadows under her eyes, a heaviness in her posture. But deeper than exhaustion, he saw something else: hesitation. Fear.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Adrian said quietly. “I just… I’m glad you came.”

Her lips curved faintly, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

They talked, but the words felt different. Safer, lighter, circling around shallow topics. Gone were the nights of long conversations about dreams and fears, about the things that mattered. Now, every sentence seemed carefully chosen, as if she were afraid of revealing too much.

When she left that evening, Adrian watched her walk away, his chest tight with a quiet ache. He wanted to run after her, to hold her hand, to tell her that no matter what shadows she carried, he wasn’t going anywhere. But something held him back — not doubt in his feelings, but respect for hers.

In the nights that followed, Adrian filled pages of his notebook with words he couldn’t say to her.

“You’re building walls where I only want to build bridges.”

“I can wait, but I fear waiting will turn into losing.”

“I want to love you, but you’re too afraid to let me.”

And yet, no matter how much the distance grew, he couldn’t let go. Every time he thought of stepping back, he remembered the way she had looked at him under the oak tree in the rain, the way her hand had rested in his as though it belonged there.

Aruna, meanwhile, lay awake in her own apartment, staring at her ceiling as he once had. She thought of Adrian’s steady gaze, of the warmth he offered so easily. And it terrified her. Because if she allowed herself to lean on him, to truly believe in him, she knew the fall would be deeper than ever before.

And so, between hope and fear, a distance was born. Not out of anger, but out of her uncertainty. Not because she didn’t care, but because she cared too much.