Distance

The next few weeks passed by in a blur. Between midterms and papers, I didn’t have the time of day to dedicate toward missing anyone. My video chats with my family were cut back to once a week, and Robert had stopped calling and satiated himself with texts. It was easier when I could ignore my phone for hours at a time and only reply when it was convenient. I felt bad, of course. I was ignoring people who genuinely wanted to keep tabs on my life and see how I was doing. But everyone knew that it was better to let me work through my stress alone. I had a nasty habit of lashing out when I got like this.

As soon as I was finished with my last term paper, I began studying for finals. When had October suddenly become December? I had grossly underestimated the amount of work that went into my last year of school. Really, I should have come to Ireland for my sophomore or junior year. I would have had much more free time to enjoy the place. But then again, I hadn’t felt the need to leave back then.

I closed my textbook and opened the blinds that covered my window. Snow was falling, but down below I could see that the roads were dark with moisture. To be in winter, but not have a single flake of snow on the ground that hadn’t melted, was unheard of to me. I was used to getting the first snowfall of the year in early October, and having the city disappear under the thick white blanket until some time in late April.

I stood at the window, just watching the lazy snowflakes catch on a breeze before drifting down toward the traffic. As I stared, the soft puffs of white were gradually replaced by thick, heavy raindrops. I sat down, perching myself lightly on the windowsill. I got lost for a moment inside of my own head. Robert would be coming back in just a few days. I really could hardly contain my excitement at the thought. I hadn’t seen him in two weeks, and even then it had just been for a few hours.

My phone lit up where it sat on the corner of my desk. I hesitated for a long moment before giving in and answering. Somehow I knew that I wouldn’t be able to focus enough to study tonight anyway. I scooped it up and pressed it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“You actually picked up,” there was a note of surprise in the voice on the other end.

I smiled to myself. “Well when I saw that it was you calling, I could hardly ignore it. Are you done for the day?”

“Just finished. Are you?” Robert asked.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I just can’t bring myself to study right now. I need an evening of victory for finishing my last paper for the term.”

“So you’ll be back to studying when I come around, then?”

“Probably. But study breaks are always welcome.”

It was several days later when the snow had finally stuck, leaving a thin white blanket over the city of Dublin. I enjoyed the sight from my bedroom window, feeling slightly disheartened by the knowledge that by the time I was finished the semester, the snow would be brown and slushy from traffic and footsteps. I had my feet kicked up onto my desk and a textbook propped open in my lap, but I couldn’t seem to focus on the words. I kept glancing outside, wishing that I could justify leaving my bedroom. Even if it was just long enough to grab a handful of snow, pack it into a ball, and come back inside and throw it at Breanne. She was the only roommate who was home. I was pretty sure that Samantha and Zoey were in the library, but I couldn’t be certain.

There was a soft knock on my door. I tore my gaze from the window and cleared my throat. “It’s open.”

The door came free from its frame slowly, and a familiar curly-haired head appeared. Robert smiled at me, and my excitement caused me to momentarily forget everything else. I dropped my textbook onto the floor and ran toward him, knocking a water bottle off of my desk as I swung my feet onto the floor. I threw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and clutching him tightly.

“I thought you weren’t coming until the weekend!” I gasped, still clinging to him as if he were my life support. It surprised me just how overwhelmed I felt. Just the simple feeling of his skin against mine was like a beautiful gift. It was suddenly quite apparent that his absence had left me feeling lonelier than I’d realized.

He let out a low, breathy laugh. His fingers pressed into my back a bit harder than I’d expected. Maybe he’d really missed me, too. “I couldn’t wait. I went home and saw my parents, but then I just couldn’t stop thinking about you being stuck here studying.”

I released him, albeit a bit reluctantly, and took a moment to look him up and down. “You’ve been going to the gym,” I noticed.

He waved me off as if his accomplishment were meaningless. “Yeah, I have to put on a few pounds before I go and do my next job. I have over a month, but I know that if I put it off I won’t have enough time to actually bulk up. It takes a really long time for me to develop muscle. Do you have any idea how much I have to eat in order to gain weight? It’s disgusting!”

“Well, things could be worse. You could go to the gym for the same reason that I do. If I don’t work out regularly, I gain weight. Quite a bit of weight, actually. That is why you will never see photos of my high school graduation. I took a year off from sports so I could really get my grades high so that my college applications would look impressive. I got lazy and didn’t really do much in the way of exercise, and I am actually embarrassed about how I looked by the end of the year. As soon as I started college, I went to the campus gym and got back down to size.”

“Oh, come on, I bet you still looked beautiful.”

Now it was my turn to brush off his compliment. “I wasn’t saying that to hear you say something sweet. I was saying it because it’s true, and now you know why I go to the gym so much.”

“Maybe we should go together sometime.”

I nodded. “Yeah, absolutely. As soon as I’m done exams. Then I have a little over two weeks of holidays, and absolutely no plans to fill up the days. We can do whatever you want.”

“Oh,” he said lightly, as if he just remembered something interesting that he wanted to tell me. He sat down on my bed, which hadn’t been properly made in several days. He patted an empty spot next to him, asking me wordlessly to sit with him. When I did, Robert continued speaking. “I’ve actually been meaning to ask you about those holidays. Have you got any plans for Christmas?”

I looked down at my hands. I really was missing home, but I had no way to fund a trip back for so short a visit. “No,” I replied, hearing the defeat in my own voice. “I haven’t got anything planned. I figured I’d stay in and watch bad Christmas movies on TV and maybe make myself a box of stuffing. That’s just as good as real plans, right?” I added the last bit in a joking tone, though the attempt didn’t really make me feel any less pathetic.

Robert shook his head at me, as if I were being unreasonable. “That’s not what you should be doing. It’s Christmas, Maggie, no one should be alone. Will you come with me to stay with my family?”

My eyebrows shot up. “What? You want me to meet your family? For Christmas?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I do. They’ll love you, and you won’t have to hang out here being sad. It’s kind of a win-win situation. For me, at least,” he added with a smirk.

I felt a small smile creep at my lips. I looked up at him, and I knew that my affection was evident in my eyes. I would have made a terrible actress; my emotions were always on display. “I would love to. Thank you.”

He kicked off his sneakers and lay back on the mattress, grabbing a couple of pillows and propping up his head. “Lovely. Now that that’s settled, let’s do something fun. You look pale; you need to get out into the sunlight.”

“I wish I could. You have no idea. I have an exam tomorrow morning and another one the next afternoon. But they’re the last two I have. Then we can leave and I’ll stop being a creepy shut-in. I promise.”

He stuck out his bottom lip as he reached a hand out toward me. “I have to wait two more days?”

I lay down beside him and rested my head on the uppermost corner of his strong arm. He slid his hand around to rest upon the small of my back. “You weren’t supposed to be here until Friday, remember? This is your fault.”

“You can’t even slip out long enough for dinner? Come on, Maggie, I can’t just leave you here. Breanne just let me in. If I leave already she’ll jump to some wildly untrue conclusion and you’ll have to deal with that all alone. Is that what you want to happen? Is it?”

I laughed. “I never said you had to leave. I just said I have to study, that’s all.”

“So go ahead and study.”

It was my turn to pout. “But you just got here,” I pointed out, as if the fact could absolve all other argument. “Can we at least take a few minutes to chat about what we’ve both been up to before I bore you to death with useless facts from a textbook?”

“I’ve been working and you’ve been studying. What else is there to know?” He looked down at me with a teasing smile.

I stayed silent for a moment, staring off toward the one wall that I’d plastered with various photographs. I hadn’t really stopped to look at it lately. The last time I’d done anything to change it was when I’d added the pictures from our trip to my grandfather’s old home. It was nice having Robert represented there now. I realized then that my time here was nearly half over. This semester had flown by far too quickly for my liking. I felt like I hadn’t had the time to properly appreciate anything about this trip. And that included Robert. We desperately needed the time off over Christmas, if only to have some fun together that wasn’t shadowed by an approaching deadline or appointment.

I cuddled up against him and let my eyes fall shut. I vaguely noticed that music was still playing on my laptop at a low volume. Even when I was studying, I hated complete silence. Robert, instead of reminding me that I had an exam that I wasn’t prepared for, wrapped his other arm around me and held me close. His breathing was steady and rhythmic, and even though I hadn’t felt exceptionally sleepy, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, there was a delightful warmth surrounding me. I found myself trying to wrap myself up in it, only to find that it was connected to a firm body as opposed to a loose blanket. My eyes shot open, and I found that Robert was still next to me. His mouth was barely open, and his breathing was deep. When he looked like this, I could clearly see that he was only twenty-four. There were no dark circles under his eyes brought on by stress and sleeplessness. He could only be described just then as beautiful. I wondered for a moment if I could convince him to stop growing facial hair. This clean-shaven look was more fitting with his adorable personality, in my opinion. But then I remembered that quite often he didn’t have a choice. His look changed with each project’s requirements; the boy was a chameleon.

The room around us had darkened considerably. The artificial light from my desk lamp contrasted the shadows starkly, and the empty space beyond my window was interrupted by the distant glow of a streetlight far below. I wondered what time it was.

Carefully peeling myself from Robert’s body, I got to my feet and grabbed my phone from the desk. It was past eleven; we’d been asleep for nearly four hours. I didn’t even regret it, though I knew that I would be disoriented and exhausted by the time my exam rolled around.

I sat down at my desk chair and began to read by the lamplight. I flipped the pages as quietly as I could manage, hoping not to wake Robert. He deserved to get a good sleep. I studied for a little over an hour, then decided that if I didn’t know this material by now, I never would. I closed the book and crawled back between the sheets. It felt as if some part of Robert had been subconsciously waiting for my return, because he wrapped his arms firmly around me as soon as I was next to him.

When Robert woke up a few hours later, he stretched his limbs just enough that the motion jarred me into consciousness. I blinked groggily, and he noticed.

“Oh, Maggie, I’m sorry. Go back to sleep. It’s early.”

I shook my head. “It’s fine. We fell asleep really early, so it makes sense that we would wake up early too.”

He didn’t argue further. He got up and left the bedroom, and I didn’t ask any questions. I assumed he was going to the bathroom or something. I wrapped my grey throw blanket around my shoulders and sat down at my desk. I opened up my laptop and chose a playlist in my media player, then turned the volume low to avoid disturbing my roommates. As I did some last minute cramming for my exam, I listened to some of my favourite bands from back home. I had been exposed to a completely different music scene since my arrival here, but sometimes it was nice to listen to something familiar.

“Here,” Robert said gently, placing a steaming mug in front of me.

I looked up at him with eyebrows raised up in surprise. He smiled and sat down on the edge of my mattress, clutching a mug of his own between his long fingers. He looked refreshed and completely calm. I picked up the cup of tea, pausing to inhale the strong scent.

“Thank you.”

He nodded. “Yeah, cheers. Do you want me to leave while you study? I could come back tomorrow night when you’re done your tests.”

“No,” I said. The word came out too fast and sounded clipped. There was no arguing with the tone in my voice. “Please stay. I don’t stress out so much when you’re here.”

He smiled again, and he didn’t look as though he were being inconvenienced in the slightest. He looked happy to be there with me. Robert amused himself by browsing through my music and deciding which Canadian bands he liked while I read over my notes one last time. He wished me luck and sent me off to my exam in much the same way that a proud parent sends their child off to kindergarten for the very first time. I rolled my eyes at the show he put on, but regardless his attitude left me feeling soothed. The exam didn’t seem quite so utterly frightening anymore. It was nice to have Robert back.

I finished the semester, and when I returned home after my last test, Robert was waiting with an open suitcase and an expectant stare. I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing, but then thought better of it. He was waiting for me to finish packing so that we could leave the city for the next couple of weeks. While I tossed clothing into the bag, Robert played around on my laptop.

“Uh, Maggie? You’re getting a video call. What do I do?”

I abandoned my efforts and approached the desk, shoving the rolling chair that Robert was still sitting on aside. He made a grunting noise, but didn’t say anything to truly express whatever he had felt about my gesture. He hid out of sight of the computer; he knew that my family weren’t exactly aware of our relationship just yet.

“Hi, Mom,” I greeted my mother as her face appeared on my screen.

“Hi, dear. You’re done your exams, right?”

“Yup, I just finished about an hour ago. Don’t worry, you’re not interrupting my studying or anything.”

She smiled widely. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Oh?” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “What’s that? You got me a new puppy to entertain Jax while I’m gone?”

My mother made an odd, disapproving sound in the back of her throat. “I’m having enough trouble just keeping the one dog under control while you’re gone, I’m not about to go out and get another one. No, Maggie, that’s not what I was going to say. I wanted to tell you that all of us pooled together the money that we would have normally spent on you for Christmas. Your dad and I, your sister, and your grandparents all chipped in. Instead of sending you a gift in the mail, we bought you a round-trip plane ticket. You’re coming home for the holidays!”

Her enthusiasm made me smile widely, if only for a fraction of a second. My stomach dropped, and I looked over at Robert sharply. He had made me the kindest offer, and I’d actually been looking forward to spending Christmas with him. Now I had to cancel, and I felt awful. On the contrary, he was giving me an encouraging look. He gave me a thumbs up, then gestured wildly for me to focus on the conversation that I was still having on the computer screen. I looked back at my mom, who seemed to be waiting expectantly for me to exhibit a proper reaction.

“Really? That’s fantastic! I can’t wait.” Despite the cheeriness that I was forcing into my speech, my voice cracked. I hoped that she didn’t notice it.

“The flight is tomorrow morning at eleven. That’s your time, not ours. We’ll be here to pick you up when you get here. You just have to pick up your ticket when you get to the airport. Everything has been reserved and paid for. We’re all so excited to see you, Maggie. It feels like you’ve been gone for ages.” Her smile was so sincere that it was obvious that she was oblivious to my mixed emotions.

“I’d better get packing. Thanks, Mom. I’ll see you soon.”

I disconnected the call, then turned back to Robert. Despite how I knew that I should be feeling, I felt the corners of my lips turn down ever so slightly. Robert got up from my desk chair and took my face in his hands.

“I’ll still be here when you get back.” His lips brushed across mine so faintly that I wasn’t entirely certain that I hadn’t imagined the contact.

“I wish I’d told them about you. Maybe then they would have considered getting you a ticket, too. Of course, it is a lot of money,” I sighed. I really, truly hated myself for feeling this way. It wasn’t as if Robert and I were married; there was no real reason for us to spend Christmas together. On top of that, I shouldn’t have been so miserable about a few extra weeks apart. We were nearly always apart. And I had been the one who had chosen to move across the world alone. I should have been more than prepared to do everything else by myself as well. “I’ll miss you. It feels like I just finally got time with you and now it has been taken away.”

He tapped his chin thoughtfully, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was plotting something. “I’ll be back. Give me a couple of hours.”

“What are you going to do?”

He started to walk away from me, then paused in my bedroom doorway. “Would your family be alright with the idea of having another houseguest for the holidays?”