Episode 12: The Space Between Dreams
I always thought healing would be a finish line.
Like one day I'd wake up, and everything would be calm, clear, and whole.
But healing, it turns out, is movement. Constant. Shifting. Sometimes forward, sometimes sideways.
And sometimes... it pulls you in opposite directions.
A week after the gallery show, Clara received an email that made her stop mid-bite at breakfast.
I looked up from my mug of coffee to see her frozen, eyes wide.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
She slowly lowered the phone. Her voice trembled. "I... I think I just got offered a scholarship."
I blinked. "Wait, what?"
"A full scholarship. Florence. Italy. A six-month program for young artists."
My heart skipped. "That's incredible!"
"I submitted last year, before everything. I forgot about it. They must have seen my recent work."
She was shaking now, and I rushed to her side.
"You did this," I said. "You earned this."
She met my eyes. "But it's so far."
I didn't speak right away.
Because the truth was, I wanted to be selfish.
I wanted her to stay.
But I had promised I'd never be the wall again. Not the silence. Not the fear.
So I smiled, even though my chest ached.
"You should go," I said.
Her eyes watered. "What about you?"
I swallowed the knot rising in my throat. "We've spent so long surviving. It's time we start living. For real."
She nodded slowly, tears slipping down her cheeks.
And just like that, we both knew: everything was about to change again.
Two days later, I got my own email.
From a small independent publisher.
They'd found Between Us, the Silence on Webnovel. They loved it. They wanted to talk about a possible print deal.
My hands trembled.
I told Clara that night.
She threw a pillow at me. "You waited all day to tell me this?!"
"I didn't want to overshadow your big moment."
"You idiot," she said, laughing. "This is our moment."
And it was.
Just... not the one we'd imagined.
The next weeks were a mix of chaos and beauty.
Clara started prepping for her trip.
I prepared a manuscript sample and notes for my call with the publisher.
We talked late into the night about what the future could look like. What it meant to grow not only side by side, but apart.
"I'm scared," Clara admitted one evening. "That I'll lose myself again out there."
"You won't," I said. "You've worked too hard to find her."
She looked at me. "And what if we grow too far apart?"
I took her hand. "Distance doesn't erase what we've rebuilt. It expands it."
She smiled, small but certain.
We were still learning to believe in good things.
Her flight was early.
I made her tea while she double-checked her sketchbooks and passport.
We didn't cry at the airport.
Not because it wasn't hard.
But because we knew—this wasn't an ending.
It was the beginning of another chapter.
"You'll keep writing?" she asked, hugging me tightly.
"Every day."
"And you'll send me the ugly drafts?"
"Only the ugliest."
She laughed.
And then she walked away, boarding a plane toward a version of herself she hadn't met yet.
And I stood there, alone—but not empty.
I was full of the story we had written together.
That night, I sat in our tiny apartment, the silence thicker than usual.
But this time, it wasn't heavy.
It was sacred.
I opened my laptop.
Typed the next episode.
I wrote about the airport.
About letting go without losing.
About how sometimes love means cheering from afar.
And when I hit publish, I smiled.
Because I knew, wherever she was, Clara would read it—and feel home.