ARIA'S POV...
Choosing distance didn't feel as powerful as people made it sound. It wasn't dramatic or brave. It was quiet. Almost uncomfortable.
The days that followed blurred into routine—lectures, note-taking, walking familiar paths around campus. I kept busy on purpose. Not to forget Ethan, but to stop myself from orbiting around him in my thoughts.
I was learning something new about myself: silence could be healing, but only if I let it be.
Ella walked beside me one afternoon, swinging her bag carelessly. "You've changed," she said suddenly.
I glanced at her. "Good change or scary change?"
She smiled. "Peaceful change."
That word lingered with me—peaceful. I wasn't used to it. My emotions had always been loud, demanding attention. But now, everything felt muted, like my heart was finally resting after running too hard for too long.
I stopped checking my phone every five minutes. Stopped rereading old messages. Stopped waiting.
That was the hardest part—accepting that no one was coming to rescue me from the ache. I had to sit with it myself.
And I did.
Some evenings, I sat alone on my bed with music playing softly, staring at the ceiling and letting my thoughts wander without judgment. Other nights, I wrote. Not pretty words. Honest ones. Words that admitted I had loved deeply and lost painfully—and that both could exist without canceling each other out.
I saw Ethan again a few times.
Across the courtyard. Near the library. Once in the cafeteria.
We didn't speak.
But our eyes met briefly, and in those moments, I realized something surprising: the pull wasn't as strong anymore. It was still there, faint and familiar, but it no longer controlled me.
That realization scared me more than missing him ever did.
One evening, Isabella convinced me to join her and Ella for coffee. The café was warm and crowded, filled with laughter and low music. I listened more than I spoke, content just being present.
That's when someone asked, "Mind if I sit?"
I looked up to see Lucas—the quiet guy from my literature class. He smiled politely, not expectantly.
"Sure," I said.
We talked about books, about how confusing adulthood felt, about how everyone seemed to be pretending they had it all figured out. He didn't flirt. He didn't push. He didn't make promises.
And for the first time in a long while, I didn't feel the need to impress anyone.
Later that night, walking back to my room alone, I caught my reflection in the glass door. I looked the same—but I felt different. Lighter. More grounded. More real than before.
I wasn't healed.
I wasn't in love.
I wasn't certain about the future.
But I was finally in my own space.
And that, I realized, was where everything truly began. I was finally in my space .