The Space Between Us

The first time Claire met Sam she was very late for work and he was feeding the ducks in the park on a bench nobody ever sat on. He looked up from the bread crumbs just as she ran past him, her coffee spilling over the lid.

“Careful.” He said. “That looks very hot.”

She paused only for a second. Just long enough to notice how the sunlight caught his eyes. And then she was gone. Her heels clicked against the sidewalk, her mind already on the 10 a.m. meeting. The second time they saw each other was two weeks later. She was early that day. Her morning was unusually calm. Sam was there again on the same bench with the same bread crumbs feeding the same ducks in the same quiet smiling the same crooked smile.

“You again.” He said he like he had been waiting for her.

Claire paused before answering. “Do you always sit here?”

He shrugged. “Only when I want to start the day off right.”

She surprised herself by sitting down next to him. They didn’t talk much but just enough. She learned that he worked nights at a radio station. He loved vinyl records and he hated staff meetings and liked rainy days. When she left she felt something unusual. Not a spark yet but a thread, a calming thread.

The third time he brought an extra coffee, black, no sugar. She never told him that she liked her coffee that way but he got it right. Over the next few weeks their morning meetings became nice rituals. Sometimes she brought her favorite banana muffins, blueberry cranberry muffins or his favorite chocolate glazed donuts. Sometimes he brought stories but they always left something unspoken between them as if acknowledging it would somehow break whatever spell the park had cast.

But over time things shifted as it always does. One day Claire showed up in a dress too fancy for work. Her smile was different. It was much brighter. She sat sipping coffee and talking about nothing but everything. Sam listened, he really listened but his hands were fidgeting more than usual.

“Big day?” He said finally.

She laughed. “Kind of. My boyfriend, Daniel, is taking me to meet his parents.”

The words dropped like a stone in the ocean. Sam nodded. “Sounds serious.”

Claire glanced at him. She was searching for something in his face. Perhaps something that gave her permission to say more. “I don’t know, maybe.” And then. “What about you? Do you have someone special in your life?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

She felt like that day the thread between them stretched thin like a rubber band that pulled back.

They still met in the park and still drank coffee and still fed the ducks. But now the silence between them was not peaceful anymore. It was thick and full.

Daniel was a kind man. He was smart, funny and successful, the kind of man that fit right into Claire’s life like he was made for it. Her friends adored him. Her parents approved of him. And when he proposed on a weekend trip up the coast she said yes with a smile so wide it nearly reached her eyes.

Nearly.

The day came to tell Sam. He was already on the bench and beside him were two cups of coffee and a book of poems. She sat down quietly.

“I’m getting married.” She said.

Sam didn’t look up. He didn’t look at her. He bruised a crumb from his lap. “Congrats.” He said.

“You don’t really mean that.”

“I do.” He said softly. “You deserve happiness and someone who you can be happy with.”

Claire blinked. “You make me happy.”

Those words floated between them like a challenge.

Sam exhaled. “Not enough.”

They didn’t speak for several weeks. Then one foggy, misty morning Claire sat down beside him again. No coffee, no muffins, just misty rain, fog and the smell of wet leaves on the ground.

“I miss this.” She said.

“I know.”

“I think about you more than I should.” She said.

Sam nodded. “Me too.”

She turned towards him. “So why not..?”

He met her eyes and then the wait of all their silent mornings pressed between them.

“Because you said yes.” He said. “And I won’t be the reason you say no.”

Tears streamed down Claire's cheeks. She reached down for his hand. He let her hold it.

“I don’t love him like I thought I would.” She whispered.

Sam’s voice was almost a whisper too. “And one day you might resent me for being the reason you walked away.”

Claire shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

“You might.”

They sat in the rain quietly again. But this time the quiet felt like grief.

In the years that followed they rarely saw each other. Once at a bookstore she saw him thumbing through a book of poetry, the same book he brought that day. He smiled and she nodded. Her wedding rings gleamed under the lights in the bookstore. Another time she received a postcard. The post card came with no return address and no signature, just a line from a poem: “Some things are too beautiful to last. But they leave a mark.”

She kept it in a drawer beneath a stack of letters she wrote that were and would never be sent.

Claire had a good life. She had a nice house and a career. She had two children who filled her days with joy and happiness. She smiled in all the family and friends photos and selfies she sent to her parents. She smiled at parties and pretended she was having the time of her life. Although they were mostly boring and she would rather have been sitting on a park bench in the rain feeding the ducks breadcrumbs. Sometimes in the more quiet moments which filled her mornings she went to the park near her house and sat on a bench that nobody sat on and watched and fed the duck bread crumbs and wondered. She didn’t regret anything she just remembered.

And somewhere maybe, just maybe, somewhere on a quiet night at a radio station or beneath a rainy sky with wet leaves on the ground Sam thought of her too. Hopefully he thought of her not bitterly but just tenderly and with love not longing. Because some love stories aren’t meant to unfold the way we wanted them too. They are meant to just exist in the space between. The spaces of almost. The spaces where all the maybes live. The mornings where nothing happened but where everything is felt. Not all heart breaks end with a big bang. Some just stay quiet full of things that were never said.