The Distance Between Us

The iphone buzzed on the nightstand at 6 AM, exactly as it had for twelve years. Sarah's morning run invitation. I stared at the screen, thumb hovering over the message, then deleted it.

Three months since Marcus's funeral. Three months since Sarah had looked me in the eye and said she'd needed space—space from me, from our running group, from everything that reminded her of him. We'd been the three of us since college: Marcus the steady one, Sarah the fierce one, me the one who tagged along. When the pancreatic cancer took him in six months, it took something essential between us too. Some vitamin for the soul that neither of us could name.

I laced up my shoes anyway. Some habits are harder to break than others.

The morning air was already thick with summer heat as I started running, my feet finding the familiar rhythm along the river path. Sarah and I had logged thousands of miles here, Marcus cycling alongside us on weekends. The path to the aquatic center where we'd all go swimming afterward, where Marcus would complain about the cold water while Sarah did laps with relentless precision.

My phone buzzed again. Unknown number.

"It's Sarah," her voicemail said later, after I'd let it ring through. "I'm at the pool. I keep thinking I see him there, in the lane next to mine. I keep turning to tell him something and finding empty water. And I realized—I need my friend. Even if it hurts. Even if everything hurts."

I stopped running. The river flowed beside me, indifferent and ongoing.

The aquatic center was quiet when I arrived. Sarah sat at the edge of the pool, her legs in the water, staring at the ripples she made with her toes. She didn't turn when I approached.

"Remember," she said softly, "how he'd always forget his vitamin D supplements? Said real swimmers got everything they needed from the sun."

I sat beside her. "He'd say that while coughing in the shade."

She laughed, a broken sound. "God, we were stupid to think we had forever."

We sat there for a long time as the morning light moved across the water, two people learning how to swim through grief without the person who'd taught us both how to float.