For the First Time | n.h.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Three Months Later:

The thing about distance is that it’s measured in more than just sections of land. Kilometres, miles, metres, yards...they’re all simply quantities of empty space; long segments of nothingness between things that matter. Distance is more than that though. Distance can be measured in time; like the number of hours you’ve been away from him. It can measured by loneliness; the point where he’s too far away and too long gone for you to feel him anymore. Distance can also be measured by a breaking point; the summit at which the connection breaks and nothing is holding the two of you together anymore.

                Distance is what separated Niall from me and me from Niall. It was everything lingering between me here and Ireland and him, wherever he might be in the world. The heart wrenching thing about this was that I had no idea where that was. Niall was far away; perhaps in kilometres, perhaps not. Whether he was in China or the next town over, he was too far away from me. I wanted him here, with me. I wanted to eradicate the distance until it was just the two of us. I wanted to be close to him. I needed to be close to him.

                But I had no idea where he was.

                I spent a very long time thinking about exactly what I wanted from him. Did I want an apology? I had already received one. Niall had apologized as clearly and sincerely as I had ever imagined...and although his words were on paper, they were similar to mine, and they came from some place inside of him that felt and understood how I was feeling. Things wouldn’t be perfect, but they would be...better...different. Different could be good.

                Three months had gone by and this is what I thought about. I thought about Niall...I thought about the potentialities of my future and of his future and I spent a significant amount of time wondering. Dublin was a terrific place to wonder. Despite my new place and my new little world, I desperately missed the city. At some point during the time I lived there with Niall, it had become home to me.

                Well, I was bloody sick of being so far away from any variation of the word home.

                This is why I moved back. I felt like a traveller of sorts; it seemed every few months I was picking up and moving, trying to find somewhere to belong. I felt like one of those people who belonged to no one. People seemed to come and go, and there was rarely a constant. Cassidy was a constant...Niall’s family was a constant...I wished Niall was a constant too. Like a set number that you never needed to worry about changing. I wished Niall was like pi...but then I realized that I was wishing for the wonderful boy to be similar to an infinite number and that I was making weird analogies again. Then again, no one actually knows how pi changes; it might even out into a pattern of repeating numbers or perhaps continue in a random sequence...I guess Niall was like pi. Or perhaps I was simply an over imaginative idiot who was paying no attention to her public surroundings.

                Dublin had some nice parks and I often found myself lost in the scenery; sitting on a park bench alone reading, or staring down a waterway like I was half-mad. It didn’t bother me much though; being odd or peculiar was sort of a character trait and there comes a point in life when you finally accept it.

                Cassidy was meeting me in the city today. She had yet to see my new apartment, which I warned her is just as shitty as my old one. The girl was always excited though, and insisted on coming up for a few days.

                She arrived at my apartment late, as was expected, and I rushed downstairs to meet her at the door. When I saw her face she was smiling, and it was the kind of smile that people get when they’re so happy they’re sad. She wrapped me up in a hug, dropping her bag on the concrete step in the process.