Five Feet Apart Novels & Stories

she said. “Yes,” he agreed. “And you made it worse.” “Yes,” he said again. She turned. “Why?” His voice dropped. “Because watching them diminish you felt unbearable.” Her chest tightened. “Arrow—” “We should keep distance,” he said abruptly. “This—” He gestured vaguely between them. “—is exactly what Clause Five was designed to punish.” She nodded, throat tight. “You’re right,” she said. They stood there, separated by a few feet and an impossible truth.

Victoria was near the program table, which was approximately six feet from where I was standing, and she was very still. Carol Reyes said something I did not hear and I said excuse me and she said of course and stepped back with the elegant instinct of a woman who had been in complicated rooms for twenty years and understood when a complication was arriving. Adrian reached me. He stopped. He was three feet away, which was the same distance as the gala five years ago. The same distance as the Midtown restaurant. As the gallery opening. The specific three feet that had been the consistent geometry of every version of whatever this was.

The gesture of proximity without the contact, the reaching without the arriving. He looked at my hand on the table. He looked at me. He put his hand on the table. Not on mine. Beside mine. The two hands on the table in the candlelight, six inches apart, the specific charged space of six inches between two people who had been managing fourteen feet for eight weeks. The sitting room through the wall. My mother’s voice. His hand six inches from mine. “I’m frightened,” I said. Quietly. “About Monday. About what comes out. About my mother.”

Twenty paces. That was the distance I settled on. Close enough to hear the sound of her sneakers against the concrete, but far enough that I remained a silhouette if she happened to glance back. It was a distance that felt like a leash, one I was holding, and one that was wrapped tightly around my own throat.

he said. "That you have been sitting across this sofa from me for an hour reading an official document and the whole time part of you has been elsewhere," I said. "Aware of where I am and the fact that I am here and that the distance between us, which is approximately three feet of sofa cushion, is a distance you would prefer not to be maintaining." He looked at me across the sofa. "Three feet," he said. "Approximately," I said. "That is a correctable distance," he said.

Samuel is three seats away. Three seats. Approximately six feet. The distance between us might as well be six inches for the way I feel it, a low, constant electrical current running under everything, coloring the organ music and the priest’s words and the smell of the lilies and the particular formal misery of a Thomas family funeral. I keep my eyes forward. I feel him anyway.

"Stay off the cleared ground. Keep your feet clear of the tension wires." We began inching along the edge of the forest, keeping a safe five-foot distance from the treacherous boundary line. Vanya and Atlas stayed close to the perimeter edge, eyes sharp for any movement. The night was deathly quiet, save for the soft rustle of wind through the pines. Jill was walking near the rear, clutching the heavy metallic shortwave radio carefully against his chest. His eyes were glued to the ground, terrified of missing a hidden wire in the dark.

and come alone. See you in five. Make it ten.

There was no getting around that. "How far away is your apartment?" Peter asked, turning to face Justine. "It's four blocks." I closed my eyes firmly, knowing that we'd have to walk.

He had a lot of people to write to. data-p-id=8a7ab20ec0ab3262ce329c7dcb399a4e,style=text-align:left;,*** data-p-id=14da9fa5d5bffe76714efa73d166289c,Five days. data-p-id=eab4dd15aafad84892e28d81f9e30fcc,Five days of waiting.