Night had fallen softly over the city. From Sofía's apartment, the murmur of cars was barely a distant echo, a constant, warm hum, as if the world wished not to disturb her.
The door closed with a soft click as she returned from the hospital. She placed the keys on the shelf, slipped off her shoes in the hallway, and walked barefoot to the kitchen. She turned on a single, dim light. The night called not for harshness, but for something akin to introspection.
On the table, just as Tomás had left it, still lay the bound manuscript, with that title that now seemed both a wound and a refuge: Seasons of Solitude.
Sofía ran her fingers over the spine of the book, as if touching something sacred. The professor hadn't finished reading it yet, but his face... his face had said it all. She too had felt it: that this text was not only Tomás's heart, but the mirror in which they both, unknowingly, had seen themselves reflected in recent months.
She poured half a glass of wine, more out of habit than need, and sat down. The hardcover notebook she used for her own writings was open beside the manuscript. Inside, words had begun to multiply in recent weeks. Pages and more pages. Not loose phrases, not drafts. Full pages. Scenes. Dialogues. Living feelings. Everything that had been stagnant for years, now flowed. As if someone had truly uncorked the wellspring of her soul.
"I won't like everything," she whispered, "because I know some things hurt too much."
Still, she opened the manuscript. She reread the first chapters, the ones she had corrected with him during afternoons of soup and wine, of dirty laundry on the floor and soft music in the background. She knew it. She knew it word for word. But now, reading it bound, with the story closed, finished, something was different.
Now it hurt.
Because she recognized the goodbyes hidden in the silences between sentences. Because she noticed that some descriptions were made with his voice. Because at certain moments, she herself was the season he returned to when there was nothing left.
And now that she thought about it... he hadn't said he would keep coming.
He didn't promise her.
He only stayed that time because she asked him not to leave.
"I won't leave. I'll stay until you leave."
Now she understood. It had been his way of saying goodbye.
Sofía closed the book and leaned towards the notebook she had been writing in. The last pages were firmer, more intense. What at first had been merely an emotional cleansing, a kind of catharsis, had become a real story. Her story. A narrative in which the protagonist, a broken woman, rediscovered her voice through an unexpected visit and the warmth of a shared routine.
She had sent the manuscript days ago. She knew that if she won, she would have to leave. That would mean leaving everything behind, even Tomás. But she couldn't avoid it.
Not now. Not when the voice she had recovered burned so intensely.
"I'm sorry, Tomás," she whispered to the notebook. "I thought you were the one who would leave... but it seems it's me."
The glass remained half full, but she didn't touch it again.
She rested her head on her arms, between his manuscript and hers, and closed her eyes with a sad peace. There was someone in the world who had loved her with such great tenderness, who never tried to hold her back.
And that love, even if it was silent, even if it would never touch her again, had saved her.
As the professor had done years ago. As Tomás had done now.
And in that salvation, Sofía understood what the old man had told her: "Some just pass through, heal... and move on."
Tomás had been her passage. And she... she was already beginning to fly.
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The weeks passed with the soft promise of an increasingly certain spring.
And with them, Tomás's footsteps crossed the threshold of Sofía's apartment at least twice a week, though lately, these visits had become more frequent. Some days he would stop by after work, his apron still folded under his arm. Others, he would arrive early with a bag full of food containers. He never came empty-handed.
"I brought the week's kit," he'd say with a smile.
Sofía, at first, would feign annoyance.
"I'm not an invalid old woman," she'd repeat, with less and less conviction each time.
"I know. You're a busy woman writing, and that's enough for me," Tomás would reply as he headed straight for the kitchen, as if the apartment partly belonged to him too.
She would follow him with her gaze. She used to drink to silence the day; now she would pour a glass and leave it forgotten on the desk. She no longer needed the wine. She had him. His constant presence, his unconditional tenderness, had done more for her than any treatment. He cooked while she wrote. Sometimes in silence. Other times with a soft song in the background. The city outside could fall apart, but inside, time slipped by with a strange and serene warmth.
And the most incredible thing of all: she was writing.
She wrote pages, whole chapters, furious or soft fragments. A story about a broken woman who refused to fade away completely, and who, little by little, began to come back to life. In that story, of course, there was a boy with tired eyes who cooked for her and kissed her forehead like a silent ritual.
Sofía hadn't told him she had sent the manuscript. It wasn't out of fear of his judgment. It was out of fear of his reaction if she won.
If she didn't win, nothing would happen. He would never know. But if she did...
She knew Tomás would smile with that gentle gesture of his, hug her tightly, and tell her he was proud. She knew he would tell her, "You have to go."
And she...
She didn't want to go.
Or rather, she wanted to. But she didn't want to stop seeing him.
And that contradiction accompanied her every time he opened her food, or placed the plate on the table and sat beside her, in silence, watching her fingers tap the keyboard. Sometimes he would look at her, smiling, and that smile was so calm, so pure, that it hurt her.
"What are you looking at?" she'd say, without looking up from the screen.
"I'm looking at you still standing," he'd reply, shrugging. "That's enough."
She wouldn't answer. Sometimes, when he went back to the kitchen, she'd hide her face in her hands. Or close her eyes for a second. And she wondered how much longer she could keep pretending that everything would stay like this forever.
One Thursday night, after they had dinner in silence and Sofía re-immersed herself in her manuscript, Tomás lay down on the sofa for a moment. His eyes were closed and his coat was still on. She watched him for a few seconds from the hallway, without him noticing. Her chest tightened. She wanted to walk towards him, touch his face, tell him something, anything.
But she didn't.
She returned to her desk, turned on the lamp, and wrote:
"He was a warm season in the middle of winter. The kind of refuge you don't find twice in a lifetime. And I… I was cowardly enough not to ask him if he wanted to stay."
When Tomás left that night, she walked him to the door. He held out his hand, as always, and she took it with both of hers, raising it to her forehead.
"You won't forget, right?"
"Never," Tomás whispered, and this time his kiss was longer, slower. Warm and ardent, like a goodbye not yet spoken aloud.
She said nothing to him. But when she closed the door, she leaned against it, her back against the wood, looking at the ceiling, breathing deeply. She wasn't ready to say goodbye. But perhaps… very soon she would have to.