"They are when you're someone who runs from connection." Sienna reached out, stilled Maya's restless hands. "And not responding isn't protection. It's just a different kind of running."
Maya looked at her best friend her sister in all but blood and felt the truth of it settle in her bones. She was running. Just like Ethan ran, just with different geography.
"I don't know what to say," Maya whispered.
"Start with 'thank you.' See where it goes from there."
That night, Maya sat on her bedroom floor with all six postcards spread out in front of her like tarot cards revealing a possible future. Ice and light and color and beauty, each one a small window into Ethan's world, each one an invitation she'd been too afraid to accept.
She picked up her phone.
Thank you for the postcards. They're beautiful.
She hit send before she could overthink it, before she could list all the reasons this was a mistake, before fear could win again.
Her phone buzzed almost immediately.
You're welcome. I wasn't sure you were getting them.
Maya's fingers trembled as she typed. I got every one. I just didn't know what to say.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. You don't have to say anything. But I'm glad you're saying something now.
Why do you keep sending them?
The dots took longer this time. Because that night at the wedding was the most honest conversation I've had in years. Because you saw me really saw me and didn't run. Or you did run, but not because you didn't care. Because you cared too much.
Maya's chest ached. I did care. I do care. That's the problem.
Why is that a problem?
Because you leave. Because everyone leaves. Because caring just means it hurts more when it ends.
What if it doesn't end?
Maya stared at those four words for a long time. Everything ends, Ethan.
My flight lands in your city on November 3rd. I have three weeks before my next assignment. Can I see you? Just coffee. No pressure.
It was October 28th. Six days away.
Maya's therapist brain knew this was a pivotal moment. Say yes and step into uncertainty. Say no and stay safe but stuck. The choice was hers, and both options terrified her in different ways.
She thought about her mother, about their last fight, about all the paintings on her walls that represented a life fully lived even knowing it would end. She thought about Sophie's angry red painting, about the courage it took to express feeling even when feeling hurt.
She thought about Ethan on a glacier, taking photos of couples he'd never be part of, collecting evidence of what he couldn't have.
She thought about herself, alone in her apartment, surrounded by beauty and memory and the careful walls she'd built to keep pain out and love with it.
Okay, she typed. Coffee.
His response was immediate: Really?
Really. But just coffee.
Just coffee. I promise. A pause. Thank you, Maya.
Don't thank me yet. I might bolt.
I'll bring running shoes just in case.
Despite everything the fear, the grief, the certainty that this was a terrible idea Maya smiled.
Over the next six days, they texted sporadically. Nothing deep, nothing that required vulnerability they weren't ready for. Just small moments of connection that felt both terrifying and necessary.
Ethan sent photos of his travels not the polished images meant for clients, but the raw shots he took for himself. A street dog sleeping in a patch of sunlight. An elderly couple dancing in a square. His coffee cup next to a window overlooking a misty morning.
Maya sent pictures too, tentatively at first. Her art room after a particularly productive session. The view from her favorite café. Her mother's paintings lit by evening sun.
They didn't talk about feelings or futures or what any of this meant. They just existed in the small space between strangers and something more, testing whether they could hold connection without drowning in it.
On November 2nd, the night before Ethan's flight, Maya had a session with Dr. Chen that she'd actually kept.
"I'm seeing him tomorrow," Maya said, bypassing small talk entirely. "The photographer I told you about."
Dr. Chen set down her tea. "How do you feel about that?"
"Terrified. Nauseous. Like I'm betraying my mother by doing exactly what she wanted me to do."
"Explain that last part."
Maya picked at the hem of her sweater. "She wanted me to take risks. To live bigger. And I told her no, told her she was wrong, and then she died. So taking risks now feels like admitting she was right, which means admitting I wasted two years being wrong, which means"
"Which means you're angry at yourself for grieving the way you needed to grieve."
Maya looked up. "I should have listened to her."
"Maybe. Or maybe you needed these two years to learn what you're learning now. Grief doesn't have a timeline, Maya. And choosing to try again isn't betraying anything. It's honoring the fact that you survived and you're still here."
"What if I'm not ready?"
"What if you are and you just don't know it yet?" Dr. Chen leaned forward. "What's the worst thing that happens if you see him?"
"I fall for him and he leaves and I'm destroyed."
"And the worst thing that happens if you don't see him?"
Maya was quiet for a long moment. "I stay safe and alone and prove my mother right about living small."
"Both options carry risk. The question is which risk you can live with."
November 3rd arrived cold and bright. Maya changed her outfit four times, settled on jeans and a sweater that felt casual but intentional, then changed again because she didn't want to look like she was trying too hard.
She was trying too hard.
They'd agreed to meet at a café near the art museum, neutral territory for both of them. Maya arrived fifteen minutes early and ordered a tea she didn't drink, watching the door with a mix of dread and anticipation that made her feel sixteen instead of twenty-eight.
Ethan walked in at exactly 2 p.m., and Maya's heart did that stupid complicated thing it had done at the wedding recognition and terror and want all tangled together.
He looked different. Thinner, maybe, or just tired from travel. His hair was longer, curling at his collar. He was wearing the canvas jacket she remembered and carrying a camera bag that looked like it had been through a war.
His eyes found hers across the café, and his entire face transformed into a smile so genuine it hurt to witness.
Maya stood on shaking legs as he approached.
"Hi," Ethan said, and his voice was exactly as she remembered warm and a little rough, like he'd been talking for hours or not at all.
"Hi," Maya managed.
They stood there for an awkward moment, neither sure of the protocol. Hug? Handshake? Nothing?
Ethan held out a small package. "I brought you something. From Iceland."
Maya took it with trembling fingers. Inside was a small watercolor set portable, expensive, professional-grade. The kind her mother would have loved.
"You said you didn't paint anymore," Ethan said quietly. "But I thought maybe you'd want to. Someday."
Maya's eyes burned with tears she refused to shed in a public café. "Thank you."
"Want to sit?"
They sat. They ordered more drinks neither of them wanted. And slowly, carefully, they started talking.
It felt like the wedding night and nothing like it. The ease was still there that strange comfort of being seen but now it was weighted with everything unsaid, with six weeks of postcards and silence and fear.
"How was Europe?" Maya asked.
"Cold. Beautiful. Lonely." Ethan wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. "I kept seeing things and wanting to show you. Which was new. Usually I'm pretty content alone."
"Usually I am too."
"But not lately?"
Maya shook her head. "Not lately."
They talked for two hours. About his travels and her work, about Sienna's marriage and Marcus's new baby, about nothing important and everything that mattered. The café filled and emptied around them, and neither of them moved to leave.
"I have three weeks," Ethan said finally, as the afternoon light began to fade. "Before Thailand. I thought I don't know what I thought. That maybe we could see each other. As friends, if that's all you want. Or as"
"I don't know what I want," Maya interrupted, honest and terrified. "I know I'm glad you sent the postcards. I know I'm glad I'm here. But I also know I'm scared, Ethan. Really scared."
"Of me?"
"Of this. Of wanting something that can't last. Of you leaving in three weeks and me being" Her voice broke. "Alone again."
Ethan reached across the table, slowly, giving her time to pull back. She didn't. His hand covered hers, warm and solid and real.
"I can't promise forever," he said. "I can't even promise I won't leave in three weeks, because I will.
That's my job, my life. But I can promise that if you give me these three weeks, I'll be completely here. Present. Honest. And we can figure out the rest as we go."
"That's not much of a promise."
"It's all I have."
Maya looked at their joined hands, at this man who'd traveled across the world and still thought about her, who sent postcards like breadcrumbs leading back to possibility.
She thought about her mother's voice: When are you going to take a risk?
She thought about Dr. Chen: Which risk can you live with?
She thought about herself, alone in her apartment, safe and stuck and slowly disappearing into her own fear.
"Okay," Maya whispered. "Three weeks."
Ethan's smile was sunrise-bright. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. But I need you to know I'm probably going to be difficult. I'm probably going to panic. I'm probably going to"
"I know," Ethan said gently. "I'm probably going to be all those things too. We can be a mess together."
Maya laughed, surprising herself. "We're definitely going to be a mess."
"The best kind."
They sat in the café until it closed, talking and not talking, holding hands across the table like teenagers, both terrified and both brave enough to try anyway.
When they finally left, stepping out into the November cold, Ethan turned to her. "Can I take you to dinner? Tomorrow?"
Maya's instinct was to say no, to keep this controlled and limited and safe. But she was tired of safe. Tired of small.
"Yes," she said. "Tomorrow."
Ethan kissed her cheek gentle, brief, a promise of more and walked away toward his car.
Maya stood on the sidewalk, watching him go, her heart pounding and her mind screaming warnings she was choosing to ignore.
Three weeks.
She could do three weeks.
Maybe.