The apartment had never been this quiet—especially not on a Sunday morning. No jazz spilling from Eleanor's vintage record player, no Winter pacing while reading aloud from her journal, no kettle whistling. Just silence, and the tick-tick-tick of Eleanor's old wall clock, relentless in its reminder that time never paused—not even for love.
Winter sat curled up on the sofa, knees drawn to her chest, a portfolio open on her lap. Every page was a snapshot of the work she'd been pouring herself into since stepping away from the university—a bold shift toward multi-medium installation art. Eleanor watched her from the kitchen table, where she was reviewing an email from a nonprofit gallery in Chicago.
They had offered her a position.
Not as a professor.
As a curator.
Across the country.
"I got an offer," Eleanor said quietly, breaking the stillness.
Winter looked up, blinking as if surfacing from deep water. "What kind?"
Eleanor turned her laptop toward her. "The Evergreen Foundation. They want me to curate an upcoming collection. It would mean leading an entire exhibit series on radical femininity in art. High budget. Full autonomy. No university politics."
Winter scanned the email, then sat back. "Wow. That's... amazing."
Eleanor studied her face. "But?"
Winter hesitated. "Chicago, though."
"I know."
Silence stretched between them, brittle and uncertain.
"I've been thinking," Winter said slowly, closing her portfolio. "About applying for the artist residency program in Berlin. They're accepting experimental voices. They even offer housing. It's six months."
Eleanor blinked. "Berlin?"
Winter nodded. "I want to build something... separate from all this. Something that isn't about scandal or survival. Just art. On my terms."
Neither of them spoke.
Two possibilities. Two continents. Two futures forming side by side—and somehow, apart.
"So," Eleanor said, voice soft. "What do we do with that?"
Winter stood, restless. "I don't know. We never talked about this part. About... what happens after everything."
Eleanor's expression twisted. "We talked about a future. Just never the logistics."
Winter gave a faint laugh, almost bitter. "Isn't that the same as not talking?"
Eleanor winced.
Later that afternoon, Eleanor took a walk alone. The wind was sharp, and the streets were full of people going somewhere, heads bent with purpose. She found herself standing outside the university gates before she even realized where her feet had taken her.
The building looked different now. Smaller. Less like the center of the world.
Inside, she could hear echoes—of lectures she'd given, of students laughing in the halls, of a younger version of herself who believed in permanence.
She didn't anymore.
Back home, Winter was sketching by candlelight. The air smelled like graphite and bergamot tea. Eleanor stood in the doorway, watching her.
"I don't want to lose you," Eleanor said.
Winter looked up, eyes tired but open. "Then maybe we figure out how not to."
"How does that work? With oceans between us?"
Winter's voice was quiet. "Maybe love doesn't have to live in one city."
Eleanor stepped closer, kneeling in front of her. "I need to know something."
"What?"
"If we go, separately... do we still belong to each other?"
Winter's answer was a whisper, but it filled the room.
"Always."
Eleanor's suitcase lay open on the bed, half-packed but already heavy. Not just with clothes and books, but with choices—ones she hadn't expected to make so soon. Folded between cashmere sweaters were printouts of the Evergreen Foundation's exhibit calendar. At the bottom of the pile was a photo Winter had taken of her in the kitchen one morning: laughing, hair messy, holding a spoon like a microphone.
She tucked it into the zippered inside pocket, close to her passport.
Across the room, Winter sat at her desk, eyes flicking over the Berlin residency application. Her portfolio had been uploaded. Her personal statement polished. The "submit" button glowed on the screen like a dare.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
They didn't need to.
"Do you have everything?" Winter asked eventually, her voice quieter than usual.
Eleanor nodded, adjusting the hem of a blouse. "Everything but your stubborn art student sass."
Winter gave a dry smile. "That's not TSA-approved. Too flammable."
Eleanor chuckled—then stopped.
The silence afterward felt heavier than the humor could lift.
Winter looked back at the screen. "Should I click it?"
Eleanor crossed the room and knelt beside her. "Only if you're ready."
Winter glanced at her. "You won't hate me if I go?"
Eleanor's breath caught. "I'll hate the distance. Not you."
That was enough.
Winter pressed the button.
Submitted.
That night, they curled up on the couch, eating dinner out of takeout boxes. Thai food. Familiar. Comforting. Safe.
Eleanor leaned her head on Winter's shoulder.
"I used to think love meant staying close," she murmured.
Winter played with the edge of her blanket. "Maybe love just means not walking away... even if the road curves."
"Even if it crosses oceans?"
Winter looked at her. "Especially then."
Eleanor blinked, something tightening in her chest. "I don't want this to be the end."
Winter reached for her hand. "It's not. It's the middle. A complicated, beautiful middle."
The next morning, Eleanor left early. The airport shuttle hummed beneath the rising sun, and Winter stood outside their building, arms wrapped around herself in the chill air, watching until the van turned the corner and disappeared.
When she returned upstairs, the apartment felt hollow.
But on the fridge was a note, Eleanor's familiar handwriting in blue ink:
"Build something while I'm gone. I'll come see it in Berlin. Don't be afraid to take up space, Winter. You were always meant to."
– Yours, E.
Winter folded the note and slipped it into her journal. Then she pulled out her sketchbook and began something new.
Not because she missed Eleanor.
But because she believed in what they were becoming.
Chicago – Eleanor
Chicago greeted Eleanor with steel-gray skies and wind that cut like truth. She arrived at the Evergreen Foundation on a Monday morning, a city of sharp lines and unrelenting ambition humming around her. The foundation's gallery space was a stunning contradiction: minimalist walls painted in deep jewel tones, angular sculptures sitting in curated tension, and a young staff that greeted her with equal parts awe and skepticism.
"You're the one from the scandal," one of the interns said before realizing it wasn't a question meant to escape her lips.
Eleanor smiled tightly. "I'm the one who curated a feminist surrealism exhibition in 2012 that tripled the museum's attendance. The rest is footnotes."
She carried herself like a storm dressed in silk—composed, self-aware, and haunted just enough to seem magnetic.
By lunch, she had three meetings scheduled, one with a local journalist who wanted to "reintroduce" her to the public.
She knew what that meant.
Spin. Redemption. A narrative people could swallow.
But Eleanor wasn't interested in being digested.
That evening, she sat alone in her new loft, surrounded by boxes and echoes. The Chicago skyline shimmered beyond the glass like an invitation she wasn't sure she wanted.
She texted Winter:
Everything feels sharp here. I kind of like it. Missing you in the gaps between things.
– E.
Winter didn't reply right away.
Which wasn't unusual.
But it still hurt.
Berlin – Winter
Berlin smelled like rain, ink, and the hum of ideas. Her shared studio space was tucked above a bookstore that sold banned poetry and anarchist pamphlets. Her fellow residents were all brilliant and half-feral: a Norwegian performance artist who only spoke in monologues, a trans painter from Istanbul who mixed oil with ash, a photographer obsessed with shooting graveyards at dawn.
Winter didn't speak much at first.
She let her work speak instead.
Her first installation was a series of hanging veils stitched with confessions from anonymous women—some soft, some devastating.
People wept.
People argued.
People remembered her name.
One night, after a studio critique, she found herself sitting across from someone familiar.
Nico.
A friend from undergrad who had transferred abroad years ago, now a sculptor with bleach-blonde hair and steel earrings in both brows.
"I heard about the university fallout," he said, sipping wine. "They tried to turn you into a headline."
"They succeeded," she said dryly. "But I kept the byline."
Nico raised a brow. "And the professor?"
Winter didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Back in her apartment, she stared at her phone, rereading Eleanor's message.
Her fingers hovered.
Then typed:
I saw someone who knew the old me. The one before everything. It scared me how far I've come.
– W.
And after a pause, she added:
I miss you in the parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.
Chicago – Eleanor
Eleanor's interview dropped online the next week. The headline read:
"From Disgrace to Defiance: Eleanor Myles on Power, Art, and Reinvention."
The journalist had done their homework. The piece was balanced. Cautiously admiring. But the comment section was a battlefield.
"She seduced a student."
"She's brilliant. They should've made her dean."
"Don't forget the girl was an adult."
"How do we define abuse when the lines blur?"
Eleanor stopped reading after the third page.
Instead, she sent Winter a photo of her new office window view: lake, sky, endless stretch.
I'm not sorry for loving you. I'm just sorry we had to bleed for it.
Berlin – Winter
Winter printed the message and pinned it above her work table. Under it, she painted something new—two women made of bone and light, reaching for one another across an impossible distance.
She was starting to see the difference between silence and space.
One hurt.
The other gave room to breathe.