Distance Made Us

We learned each other differently that year. Through small rectangles of light and the particular delays of bad internet connections.

Sophia was the one who insisted we keep meeting. Every Tuesday at nine. She said that if we stopped, we would drift in ways that couldn't be undone.

She was right.

I think about that year as a kind of pressure test. The friendships that survived it were the real ones. The ones built from something more durable than shared hallways and borrowed pens.

Elias disappeared for three weeks in March and reappeared without explanation. We didn't ask. Some things you accept.