Off-Script || ENJOYJUNE

Chapter 23: The Distance Between

The city lights outside June’s window blurred as soft rain slid down the glass. She had grown used to the rhythm of Berlin, but tonight the streets below looked lonelier than usual. It was not homesickness anymore. It was something deeper, a kind of yearning that nestled itself inside her chest and refused to leave.

The shoot had been tough that day. A scene where Liora lets go of the one person she ever truly loved. The set had gone silent when the director called cut. Everyone stared at June. They saw her real tears, the trembling in her voice, the way she walked off set without a word. When she got back to her hotel, her coat was still soaked. She threw it on the floor, kicked off her boots, and turned on the tap for a hot bath. Steam clouded the mirror. Her bones ached, not from the cold, but from emotion.

She stayed in the water until her fingers wrinkled. Then she sat cross-legged on the bed, wrapped in a towel, pen in hand. She began to write without thinking, letting every word fall out as it came.

Day Forty-Four:

Tonight, I broke. Not during the scene. After. I walked to my hotel, past the tram station, through streets I could walk with my eyes closed now. But it felt like I was seeing everything for the first time again. Because none of it made sense without you. I miss being held. Not in the romantic way. I miss being seen without explanation. That is what you do. That is who you are to me.

I held it together all day. But now I just want to cry into your shoulder. I want silence that does not feel empty. I want to fall asleep knowing you are near enough to hear me breathe. I miss you more than I ever expected. More than I know how to say.

She folded the letter, kissed the corner like a habit, and tucked it into her coat to mail the next morning.

---

Enjoy found it in the mailbox on a rainy Thursday. Her umbrella flipped inside out as she walked home, and her bag was wet at the edges. But the letter inside was dry, pressed between bills and flyers. She opened it at the kitchen table with trembling hands and read it three times before even blinking.

She did not cry right away. Instead, she stared at the handwriting, imagining June’s fingers gripping the pen, the hesitation in certain strokes, the way her emotions pooled into the ink.

That night, she wrote back with slow, deliberate care.

Reply to Day Forty-Four:

You are allowed to break. You are allowed to feel the weight. You carry so much on your own. But I am here. Even from this distance, I am holding the pieces with you. Not every part of you needs to be brave. I see you in your strength and I see you in your softness. Both are beautiful. Both are real. I love you in every version.

She signed the letter and added a photo of their old coffee shop table. Just the edge of it, polished wood, one of June’s mugs still sitting on the corner like she had just stepped out for a moment.

---

Something shifted after that. The letters became shorter, more frequent. The kind you sent when you could not wait to talk. Sometimes they were only a sentence. Sometimes just a doodle. Once, June sent a wrapper from a candy she knew Enjoy loved, along with the caption, "Guess what I found."

They stopped numbering the days. They stopped treating it like a countdown.

One day, June stood outside the studio eating lunch from a paper bag. Lena, her co-star, leaned against the wall beside her.

"You look lighter," Lena said, biting into an apple.

June looked up. "Lighter?"

"Yeah. Less like you are carrying a storm in your shoulders."

June smiled. "That storm has a name. And she writes me letters."

Lena laughed. "Keep writing each other. Whatever it is, it is working."

---

Enjoy stayed up late that week editing footage. She liked the silence of night, when the world felt slower. Sometimes she would pause between cuts and play a voice memo from June. Once, it was just June humming in the dark. Another time, it was her reciting lines from an old play they had loved in college.

Enjoy sent one back in return. Her voice was hushed.

"I left the bathroom light on again. I know you hate it when I do that. I did it on purpose tonight. It made me feel like you were coming home any minute."

June listened to it at four in the morning after finishing a grueling scene under fake rain. She lay in bed wrapped in layers, eyes closed, smiling through tears.

---

The next few days moved quickly. Scenes were shot, retakes redone, scripts annotated. June was more focused than ever, not because she had something to prove, but because she had something waiting. She put everything she had into every frame, every breath of dialogue.

One night, after a particularly emotional shoot, she opened her phone and typed a message without thinking twice.

June:

I booked my flight. I’ll be home one week after wrap.

The reply came seconds later.

Enjoy:

I made your favorite blanket smell like you again. I never moved your pillow. I fluff it every night like a ritual. Come back to it.

June closed her eyes and pictured their bed. Their books. Their quiet laughter echoing through the walls. She thought about how much space one person could hold in a heart.

Enough to make a whole city feel like waiting.