The days began to fall one upon another, slow and heavy like wet leaves.
Outside, spring was in full bloom, but for Tomás, each morning seemed the same as the last. The sun shone, yes, but the light no longer reached certain corners of his soul. Sofía's apartment continued to wait for her, just as he did.
The keys rested in his pocket like a broken amulet. She had left them with a lightness that didn't match the weight they held for him. A silent promise.
"It's not for you to come in every day," she had told him with a smile, "just in case I ever need to come back and I want everything to still be in its place."
And he honored it.
Every three or four days, unannounced, he would enter the apartment like a kind ghost. He would clean calmly, dust the furniture, open the windows, change the sheets. He would wash her dishes even if he hadn't used them. He kept everything just as she liked it: tidy, with that faint scent of lavender that still seemed to float in the air.
But the hardest part was the silence.
After getting everything ready, without fail, he would sit on the sofa by the lamp where she used to write. Sometimes he would pick up one of the books they had read together, open a random page, read softly… and then let it fall onto his lap.
The impulse was automatic: he would turn his head to the spot where she used to be, expecting to find her sitting there, with a glass of wine in hand and that tired smile that brightened his day.
But she was never there.
And then, the emptiness hit him like a cold, slow, all-enencompassing wave.
Once, twice, three times, he found himself crying silently in that place. It wasn't an overflowing cry, but the kind of weeping that escapes with modesty, as if wanting to be denied. Just a few tears, barely a broken breath.
He missed her.
He missed her with an intensity he didn't know he could feel.
Every now and then, his phone would vibrate. Sofía.
A brief message, always in her light tone, as if she knew that if she lingered too long, it would hurt more.
"Today I ate like a queen. I'm writing so much I barely go out anymore. You're writing too, right?"
"It rained today, and I thought of the soup you used to make. I hate it, but I miss it."
He would reply without delay, with the same lightness she used. Sometimes they even joked. But what he didn't say, what he never said, was what he felt when he entered that space and didn't find her. How everything in that place made him look for her. The sunken cushion where she used to sleep. The teacup with her lip print, which he didn't dare wash completely. The half-closed notebook on the desk, as if she would return at any moment to continue a sentence.
And yet he did it all.
Because if Sofía ever decided to return, even if only for a night, for a week, for a single day…
He wanted that place to receive her as she deserved.
Like a home that never closed its doors.
Like a heart that never stopped waiting for her.
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The city was beautiful.
The avenues stretched wide and clean, the trees were in bloom, and the language she heard on every corner was foreign music. The air smelled different—of warm bread, wet leaves, distance. Everything was new, everything was fresh.
And yet... she couldn't stop thinking about him. Tomás.
Sofía walked every morning from her new apartment to the university library. The sky was always a little paler than at home, but the sun softer. On her desk, she had started piling up notes, ideas, paragraphs. She wrote as if life had suddenly been given back to her.
And perhaps it had. Perhaps leaving was what she needed.
But every night, when she turned off the lamp and lay down in the huge bed with white sheets, the emptiness was larger than the distance.
She missed his hands. Not for what they did, but for what they said when they shyly caressed her, as if afraid to break her.
She missed the way Tomás cooked, as if every dish were an act of unnamed love.
She missed the way he looked at her, as if in his eyes she recognized herself whole, complete, even on days when she felt broken.
She missed that home they built together without saying it.
Sometimes, she would open her phone and write to him:
"I'm alive. I've gotten used to coffee without sugar."
"It rained today, but I missed your soup."
"Do you miss me too, you brat?"
Then she would regret it and send nothing. Or delete it.
But other times, she did send it. And when he replied—with that tenderness that overflowed without him even trying—her heart hurt a little less.
She hadn't dared to tell him when she would return. Because she didn't know. Because she was afraid to put a date on goodbye.
And yet, every time she closed her eyes, he was there. Not as a memory that dissolves with time, but as a root that clings to the soul.
She remembered their last night together with pain and tenderness. The way he had hugged her, asking for nothing, just holding her. The kiss on her lips that was soft, slow, and so honest that for an instant she believed the world had stopped.
How do you survive that?
How do you keep living after knowing that kind of love?
Sofía didn't have the answer. She only knew that she was writing more than ever, that the project that brought her here was going well, that her name was starting to be spoken aloud.
But, sometimes, between one page and another, her heart would ache.
And then she would think of him, his quiet face, his long hands, his old backpack, and his tired steps that always came back for her.
What she feared most was not that he would forget her.
It was that he wouldn't.
That he would keep going to her apartment, keep cooking in her absence, keep waiting... without saying it. Without asking.
And she knew him so well, that she knew he would.
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the cover of her notebook. Words overflowed within her, as always when something hurt too much.
Freedom was hers now. Love too.
But neither truly comforted her.