tiffany: (iii)

“I’m going back to Seoul.” Tiffany said. When you looked up from your dinner plate, her gaze was already fixed on you.

“Oh,” You put your fork down and wiped your mouth with a napkin. She mentioned Seoul from time to time, the prospect of going back to sort out some affairs – affairs that she kept vague and minimally detailed. It wasn’t your business, regardless of how badly you wished to know. But it wasn’t your place to ask, nor would it ever be. “That’s nice.”

“It’s just a visit,” she said, as though she thought you were thinking otherwise.

“How long?” You weren’t sure if you really wanted to know the answer.

She gave a reluctant shrug. “Not long.”

Not long could be considered a subjective phrase – what was not long to one person could be in fact very long to another. You didn’t tell her then, but it scared you. What would you do if she never came back?

“If I’m gone too long,” she reached out to cover your hand with hers. Her touch was always gentle, so soft that sometimes you weren’t sure if it was even really there. “You can fly out and visit me. Whenever you want.”

You just nodded. You wondered why she had to go. You wondered why you weren’t enough for her to stay. Seoul was filled with love. Seoul was wrought with chaos. Los Angeles was quiet. Los Angeles was only filled with you.

The more you thought about it, the less you had to wonder.

* * *

She left silently, said little to nothing. All she gave was a kiss on the cheek and a look over her shoulder.

There was this smile on her lips. You thought maybe it was the prettiest thing you’d ever seen. It reminded you of the Hollywood sign at night, it reminded you of bookstores and iced coffees, it reminded you of the Californian heat and the cold in New York city, it reminded you of all the things she was and all the things she wasn’t.

She disappeared around the corner, bound for the departure gate, Seoul and beyond. Your chest was left aching with the realisation that you loved her. And there was nothing you could do about it.

* * *

Without her there, you had time to consider what L.A meant to you without Tiffany in it, and what Tiffany meant to you when she was on the other side of an ocean. The more you wrote about her, the more you thought and considered, it only lead to more questions and more musings that had no conclusions.

Los Angeles felt like limbo. Tiffany was just a person. And the distance was not just physical.

You kept coming up with little lines like this. You felt as though putting full stops at the end of the sentence would make it more final, would make it make more sense. But it didn’t.

Los Angeles was not limbo, it was on the coast, anchored down by the sun and twisting motorways. Tiffany was just a person, but she was also important to you, she was also the thing you looked forward to on most days. The distance was physical, it stretched across sea and land, required a 13 hour plane ride to cross it, but you also felt the distance in other places, internally, in the cavern under your heart.

You suddenly understood what she meant when she said that Los Angeles was quiet. The city was massive and its buildings spilled out across further than you could imagine, but you didn’t know it could feel this large…that it could feel this empty.

* * *

You weren’t much of anything to one another. This was a thought that crossed your mind while sitting in your seat on the aeroplane, waiting for take off. It was night. All the little lights on the runway were lit, floating in the darkness, as the stars do in the black of the sky.

You weren’t much of anything to one another. It’d been three months. All you’d done was miss her terribly. She called you sometimes, texted you sometimes. Your conversations varied in length because she was always busy. But she did say she missed you, and there was no reason not to believe her.

You were listening to one of her songs, turned to full volume in your earphones to tune out the rest of