CHAPTER 5: The Distance Between Us

                ✦ 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐓 ✦

I woke up the next morning feeling like I hadn't slept at all.

The very first thing I did was reach out and grab my phone from the nightstand, my thumb unlocking the screen before my brain was even fully awake. The chat thread was exactly how I had left it. No new notifications. No follow-up messages. Just those six words staring back at me from the dark screen.

Unknown: For disappearing all those years ago.

I stared at the blinking cursor in the text box. I tapped on it, bringing up the keyboard.

Why didn't you say something sooner? I typed out. I stared at it for three seconds, then aggressively held down the backspace key until the screen was blank again.

I tried a different approach. It's fine. Don't worry about it.

I looked at those words and felt a sharp sting of resentment in my chest. It wasn't fine. Pretending it didn't matter felt like a lie, and I hated lying. I deleted that one, too.

With a frustrated sigh, I tossed the phone face down onto my mattress and sat up, rubbing my tired eyes. I scrubbed both hands over my face, more irritated with myself than with him. Why was I even struggling to answer? He was just someone I used to know. A childhood friend who had disappeared so long ago that I had convinced myself belonged to another lifetime.

So why did two simple text messages have me sitting here before sunrise, unable to decide what to say?

I let out another slow breath, frustrated by my own reaction. It shouldn't have been this difficult.

But somehow... it was.

If he actually has something to say, he can say it to my face, I thought bitterly. I got out of bed and forced myself into my usual morning routine, determined to leave Xavier Cole in the shadows of my childhood where he belonged.

The rest of the day went smoothly, offering a much-needed breather after the chaos of the week.

I spent the morning sitting through three consecutive finance lectures, letting the professors' monotonous voices wash over me. Afterward, I locked myself in a quiet corner of the library, burying my nose in my laptop to structure my upcoming Vanguard fellowship presentation. There was no sign of Tristan, no passive-aggressive comments, and no unexpected announcements from Professor Harrison. It was just a normal, predictable university day.

Normally, this was exactly the kind of day I liked.

No surprises.

No unnecessary drama.

Just lectures, deadlines, and the quiet satisfaction of crossing another task off my list. It was the routine I had spent years building for myself because routines didn't leave. They didn't disappear without warning.

Yet every now and then, without meaning to, my concentration drifted. My thoughts wandered back to a private dining room, to storm-grey eyes that never seemed to look away, and to a quiet apology that somehow carried more weight than a dozen excuses ever could.

I caught myself rereading the same paragraph twice before realizing I hadn't absorbed a single word.

"You're going to break that screen if you keep staring at it like that," Leo said, snapping me out of my trance.

I blinked, realizing we were sitting at our usual lunch spot in the cafeteria. I hadn't even finished half of my sandwich.

"What?" I asked, pulling my hands away from my phone. I hadn't even realized I was holding it.

Leo smirked, leaning across the table and pointing his plastic fork at me. "You've checked your phone like six times in the last ten minutes, Julian. Are you waiting for a call from the fellowship committee, or did the premium-package stepbrother text you back?"

"I'm not checking my phone," I said immediately, shoving the device deep into my backpack pocket. "I was just checking the time."

Leo let out a loud laugh, clearly not buying it, but he was nice enough to drop the subject and start complaining about his statistics professor instead. I tried to laugh along, but my mind was completely somewhere else.

By the time my final class ended, the afternoon sun was starting to dip below the horizon, casting long, orange shadows across the campus. I slung my heavy backpack over one shoulder and joined the crowd of students walking toward the main exit gates.

As I stepped past the threshold of the campus, my eyes automatically drifted toward a large, leafy tree near the edge of the sidewalk. Something made me look there before I consciously realized I was doing it.

Maybe it was instinct.

Maybe it was coincidence.

Or maybe some stubborn part of me had been expecting him all day without ever admitting it to myself.

My feet came to a sudden halt.

A tall figure was standing completely still beneath the branches, partially shielded by the shade. He was wearing dark clothes—a simple black t-shirt and dark jeans—with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Xavier.

He wasn't doing anything dramatic. He wasn't leaning against the trunk like a model trying to look cool, and he wasn't looking around frantically to find me. He was just standing there, quietly waiting. The moment he saw me step through the gate, his stormy grey eyes locked onto mine.

My heart did a strange, erratic skip in my chest. I hesitated for a fraction of a second, my defensive walls instantly slamming into place, before I forced my feet to move forward.

I walked over, stopping a few feet away from him. Up close, his height was intimidating, but his face was completely calm.

The silence stretched between us for a long, heavy moment. Neither of us seemed to know how to start.

"You didn't have to come all the way here," I finally said, my voice sounding a little tighter than I intended.

Xavier looked down at me, his expression unreadable, but his voice was incredibly quiet and steady. "I know."

Another long silence settled over us. Students brushed past us on the sidewalk, laughing and talking as they headed home, completely unaware of the strange friction between the two of us.

"I wanted to apologize," Xavier said softly, breaking the quiet. "In person."

The words settled between us without fanfare. There was no dramatic speech, no attempt to earn sympathy, no desperate effort to make me forgive him. Just a simple apology, spoken so quietly that I almost missed how heavy it sounded.

There was an undeniable sincerity in his grey eyes that made it hard for me to stay angry, but the unanswered questions inside me were getting too loud to ignore. I crossed my arms over my chest, looking directly at him.

"Why now, Xavier? Why after twelve years?"

He didn't look away, but I noticed the subtle way his chest rose and fell as he took a slow breath. He didn't answer right away. He seemed to deliberate over every single syllable before he spoke.

"When I saw you at the restaurant," he said, his voice dropping a register, "I realized twelve years is a long time. Too long."

I stared at him, my grip on my own arms tightening. I couldn't stop myself from asking the one question that had been eating at me since I was a little boy. "Why did you stop writing back?"

The shift in his demeanor was instantaneous.

Xavier’s face didn't twist in anger, and he didn't stumble over his words, but his jaw clenched so hard the sharp line became completely rigid. His grey eyes darkened, filled with a sudden, heavy emotion that looked a lot like pain. He slowly turned his head, looking away from me and staring out at the passing traffic.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

The muscles along his jaw shifted again.

For one impossible second, I genuinely thought he was going to tell me everything.

I could almost see the words fighting their way to the surface.

Then whatever explanation had reached his throat quietly died there.

"I'm sorry, Julian," he finally murmured, still looking away.

I let out a sharp, frustrated breath, the rejection stinging all over again. "That's not an answer."

Xavier slowly turned his gaze back to me. His face was a calm, controlled mask again, but his eyes were wide open, holding a quiet, unyielding weight.

He didn't look like someone trying to escape responsibility.

If anything, he looked like someone who had already spent years carrying it.

"I know," he said simply.

He didn't make an excuse. He didn't blame his dad, or a lost letter, or a busy life. He just accepted the fact that he wasn't going to give me an answer, leaving the massive gap between our past and present completely wide open.

I shifted my weight, feeling an awkward, painful tightness in my throat. I wanted to push him, to demand a real explanation, but his absolute restraint made it impossible to start an argument. He was a stone wall.

"I should go," I muttered, turning slightly to pick up my bag.

As I moved, the broken zipper on my main backpack pocket finally gave out. The tracking draft of my fellowship outline began to slide right out of the opening, catching the afternoon breeze.

Before the wind could carry the paper away, a large, calloused hand quickly reached out.

Xavier caught the edge of the paper cleanly, his movements incredibly fast but entirely smooth. He didn't make a big deal out of it. He didn't comment on my messy bag or joke about my carelessness. He just carefully tucked the paper back into a secure pocket, his fingers brushing lightly against my shoulder for a split second before he stepped back, shoving his hands back into his pockets.

"You almost lost this," he said quietly.

It was such a small gesture that most people probably wouldn't have thought twice about it.

Yet something about the quiet way he checked that every page was safely tucked inside before stepping back tugged unexpectedly at an old memory.

A younger Xavier standing beneath a mango tree, dusting the dirt off my football before tossing it back to me because he knew I'd complain if it got scratched.

The memory flashed through my mind so quickly that it was gone before I could hold onto it.

I looked at the secure pocket, then up at his face. The gesture was tiny, but it felt incredibly familiar—a ghost of the boy who used to make sure I didn't drop my keys.

"Thanks," I mumbled, clearing my throat.

Xavier gave a single, deliberate nod. "Good luck with your studies, Julian."

Without waiting for me to reply, he turned and began walking away down the crowded sidewalk, his tall, broad-shouldered frame effortlessly moving through the crowd until he disappeared around the corner.

I didn't move.I just stood there, my backpack hanging loosely from one shoulder, watching the place where he'd disappeared. Students brushed past me on both sides, conversations rising and falling around me, but I barely registered any of it.Only when he was completely out of sight did I finally let out a slow breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.It struck me then that, despite everything we'd said, I had never actually answered his apology.

By the time I lay flat on my back in the dark that night, the house around me was completely dark and quiet.

My mind was a chaotic mess, but I wasn't thinking about the restaurant, and I wasn't even thinking about his lack of an answer. Instead, my brain was stuck on something much simpler, something that completely defied logic.

Why did he do it? Why would someone drive all the way to a university campus just to apologize face-to-face, stand there and take my frustration, and then leave without saying a single word to defend himself? It didn't make any sense. A normal person would have made up a lie to look better. Xavier had just stood there and accepted the blame.

That was the part I couldn't understand.

If he didn't care, why come at all?

If he did care... then why refuse to tell me the truth?

The questions circled endlessly in my head, each one leading straight back to the same frustrating dead end.

I reached over and picked up my phone. I opened the message thread, staring at the unknown contact name.

After sitting there in silence for almost a minute, my thumb moved over the keyboard. I didn't think about the twelve years, and I didn't think about Tristan or the fellowship. I just typed out two quick words.

Julian: Good night.

I immediately pressed send and flipped the phone face down onto the nightstand, my heart racing as if I had just jumped off a cliff.

I lay back down, pulling the blanket up to my chest. The room returned to total darkness, save for the tiny green indicator light on my phone that faded out a second later.

He didn't reply,Maybe he was driving home,Maybe he'd already fallen asleep Or maybe he had seen the message and simply didn't know how to answer it, just as I hadn't known how to answer his apology.

I would probably never know.

I stared up at the ceiling, listening to the quiet hum of the house. I didn't know if he was awake, if he was staring at his screen, or if he had already forgotten about the conversation. But for the first time since he had set foot back in this city, the rigid, painful knot in my chest loosened ever so slightly.

It wasn't forgiveness.

It wasn't trust.

It certainly wasn't closure.

But it was the first crack in the wall I'd spent twelve years building around the memory of the boy who never wrote back.

I closed my eyes, letting the exhaustion finally take over, holding onto the quiet peace of those two simple words hanging in the dark.