A DESTIEMPO (English version)

A DESTIEMPO / OUT OF TIME

Sometimes life gives no warning when it is about to change everything.It doesn’t quiet the world or offer clear signs.It simply happens—while someone nearby laughs,while a song plays that no one truly listens to,while two strangers share the same space without knowing that this exact moment will stay with them forever.

The school event was ordinary in every possible way. Chairs poorly arranged, laughter too loud, teachers pretending enthusiasm, music filling the room without being heard. It was one of those days meant to disappear into memory—

except for those who, without knowing it, were about to have their lives altered.

Víctor arrived late, as he almost always did.

Not because he didn’t care, but because he had never learned how to arrive on time to places he didn’t yet know were important.

Dayanna sat among her friends, absentmindedly playing with her hands, looking around with the calm curiosity of someone who expected nothing extraordinary from the day. When she lifted her eyes, she saw him. Nothing dramatic happened. No lightning. No slow motion. Just a coincidence: their eyes meeting for the first time.

They didn’t think, this is love.They thought, that’s strange… I like him.

They barely spoke during the event. A comment here, a smile there. Small exchanges, almost insignificant. Yet something lingered in the air, like a word left unsaid—something neither of them knew how to name.

Then came the normal days.

And later, without realizing it, the shared ones.

They met “by chance.”

They sat close “without intention.”

They looked for each other without admitting it.

Víctor noticed that time behaved differently with her. Hours felt shorter. Silences didn’t feel heavy. Dayanna, in turn, felt that with him she could simply be—without explanations. It wasn’t love, or so they told themselves. It was just a friendship that felt too alive.

They didn’t know it yet, but that insignificant day had already marked the beginning of something irreversible.

Love doesn’t always arrive loudly.

Sometimes it enters quietly… and when you finally notice it, it already lives inside you.

Some people don’t come to disrupt your life, but to gently organize the chaos without moving a single piece.

They make no promises of forever.

They don’t demand names.

They simply stay.

That is how the “friendship” between Víctor and Dayanna took shape.

There was no agreement, no conversation declaring importance. The deepest bonds are rarely announced. They are built in everyday moments: in messages without reason, in laughter without explanation, in the urgent need to tell someone what no one else would care about.

Over time, Víctor realized something unsettling: whenever something happened, his first instinct wasn’t to solve it—it was to tell her.

And Dayanna discovered that her best versions appeared only when he was near.

They never said I need you, but they searched for each other.

They never said I miss you, but absence felt like loss.

Friendship became a refuge.

And every refuge offers safety…

and fear.

Because when something feels too good, an uncomfortable question appears:

What if I lose it?

So they learned to walk carefully.

To measure words.

To protect silences.

Not from lack of feeling, but from too much of it.

Víctor feared that speaking would shatter what he had taken so long to build. Dayanna preferred the certainty of what they had over the risk of naming something she didn’t yet understand.

And so love—because it already was—hid behind friendship.

Some bonds grow so important they paralyze us. We fear crossing the line, convinced there may be nothing on the other side.

And we forget that not crossing it is also a way of losing.

They grew.

In age.

In emotion.

In wounds and dreams.

They showed each other parts no one else had seen. Vulnerable. Human. Real.

Without knowing it, they were doing something dangerous: loving without permission, without a name, without courage.

Life moved on.

They stayed, believing time was endless, that what mattered could wait, that silence was protection.

They didn’t know that time doesn’t destroy what is said too late—

it destroys what is never said.

Friendship learned how to stay.

Love learned how to hurt quietly.

Víctor eventually understood that the problem was never loving—it was staying silent. Unspoken love doesn’t disappear; it accumulates. It hides in glances held too long, in gestures too small, in questions never asked.

He knew what he felt.

Not always clearly, not always fully—but he knew it when her absence weighed more than any problem, when her laughter could save his day, or her indifference could ruin it completely.

Dayanna knew it too.

Even when she denied it. Even when she called it habit. Because when someone becomes your safe place, refusing to call it love doesn’t make it less real.

They shared the same fear:

to speak—and lose everything.

So love became a language they both understood

but never dared to pronounce.

Some days silence felt enough.

Others, it felt like betrayal.

Because silence is also a choice.

And every choice carries consequences.

Life didn’t stop.

New people. New responsibilities. New doubts.

And while everything changed, they remained frozen, believing stillness was safety.

They didn’t realize that time does not wait for hesitation.

Every missed chance became a quiet goodbye.

Every unspoken word, a growing distance.

Nothing ended dramatically.

Nothing was officially broken.

It simply faded-

not from lack of love,

but from lack of courage.

Because love doesn't always end when it leaves. Sometimes it ends when it never begins.

Sometimes life doesn’t test how much we love.

Sometimes it only reveals who we are willing to hurt when we believe we’re choosing love.

When Víctor found out Dayanna had left her partner, something shifted inside him. It wasn’t joy, not exactly. It wasn’t relief, and it wasn’t hope in its pure form. It was something more dangerous: a blend of illusion and urgency, as if time—quiet for so long—had suddenly started running too fast.

And Isa—Isabel—was there.

Present. Steady. Loving Víctor with an honesty that didn’t hide behind games or silence. She chose him without hesitation, without strategic distance, without fear. She loved him with clarity—

the kind he had never offered anyone.

And Víctor loved her too.

In his own way.

With clumsiness.

With invisible limits he couldn’t explain.

But the moment he learned Dayanna was “free,” something began to change. Not violently, not obviously. It changed slowly—like choices that later haunt you change: quietly, in the smallest details, in the way the heart begins to lean elsewhere without admitting it.

For two weeks, Víctor started looking at Isa differently. Where he once saw understanding, he began to see mistakes. Where he once found patience, he began to find excuses. Not because Isa had changed, but because he had already started searching for an exit.

When love wants to leave, it becomes unfair.

Isa felt it.

She felt the distance.

The sudden coldness.

The strange emptiness in his words.

She could tell she was paying for something she hadn’t done. She tried to talk. Tried to understand. Tried to stay. But you cannot compete with someone who was never completely gone.

When Víctor finally left her, it wasn’t cruel—

but it wasn’t fully honest either.

Isa carried the consequences of a love that had never belonged to her completely. She had been the safe place while another name continued living in the heart of the man who said he loved her.

And still, Isa loved him until the very end.

Víctor, convinced the path was finally clear, went to find Dayanna. He believed fate—finally—was offering them the chance they had delayed for years. He told himself the sacrifice had been worth it.

But life doesn’t work like that.

When he found her, Dayanna wasn’t alone.

She had gone back to her partner.

They had made peace.

They had decided to try again.

In that instant, something broke—

and it wasn’t only Víctor’s heart.

It was the logic behind every decision he had made. It was the belief that love justifies everything.

He had left someone who loved him sincerely…

for someone who had not been waiting.

That’s where the crack began.

A silent crack. Deep. Almost invisible—

but destined to grow with the years, to creep into future choices, to return as unresolved guilt, as absences, as late returns that no longer heal.

Because sometimes the pain doesn’t come from losing the person you love—

it comes from having lost the one you never should’ve hurt.

Víctor was left alone.

Not only without Isa—who he had abandoned with a guilt he didn’t yet know how to carry—

but also without the illusion that had pushed him to do it. Empty-handed. Heart full of questions that no longer had answers.

And yet…

life insisted on crossing their paths.

They couldn’t avoid seeing each other.

They couldn’t avoid running into one another.

They couldn’t avoid looking.

Because some looks don’t ask permission. They don’t respect decisions. They ignore promises made to others.

Every time their eyes met, something tightened in the air. It wasn’t simple nostalgia, not explicit desire. It was an entire conversation that had never been spoken aloud.

Víctor looked at her like a man recognizing his mistake too late.

Dayanna looked at him like someone who knew she had been afraid too.

They didn’t speak about what they felt. They didn’t speak about what happened. They didn’t speak about Isa. They didn’t speak about her partner.

But everything was there:

in the long silences,

in the short sentences,

in the take care that wanted to say stay,

in the I’m fine that meant the opposite.

There were moments when confession was a single breath away. Víctor nearly said it all—nearly admitted he still loved her, that he always had, that he had chased an exit that never existed.

Dayanna felt it too.

She knew.

She sensed the truth approaching.

But she chose not to hear it.

Because some confessions don’t only break the one who says them—

they also break the one who receives them.

And she had already made a decision. Maybe not the bravest one, but the one that allowed her to keep living.

So they stayed there, on the edge:

loving without touching,

understanding without speaking,

losing without a goodbye.

Almost-confessions are the cruelest ones, because they don’t allow closure. They aren’t a yes, but they aren’t a no. They are a suspended space where love becomes weight, memory, and possibility at the same time.

And Víctor understood something that hurt more than loneliness:

It isn’t enough to love.

You have to choose on time.

Because when the moment passes, love doesn’t disappear—

it only learns to hurt differently.

After so many turns, so many silent returns, Víctor decided to do something different:

to think about himself.

Not as an escape, but as an attempt to rebuild. He imagined a possible life—working, earning money, pursuing dreams he had postponed while waiting for someone who never fully arrived. For the first time in a long while, he stopped looking backward and began asking who he wanted to be if no one ever came back.

For a brief period, he felt at peace.

Not happy, but stable.

Not complete, but moving.

And then the opportunity appeared.

A trip to the United States.

An uncertain future, but a promising one. An open door he couldn’t afford to ignore.

Víctor accepted without thinking too much, the way people accept decisions that feel necessary for survival. He didn’t say goodbye emotionally to anyone, because he didn’t know how to say goodbye to what still hurt.

The day before his departure, he attended a church assembly. He wasn’t searching for answers—only silence. He couldn’t know that, once again, fate was about to intervene.

Dayanna was there.

When their eyes met, the world paused again. They talked like before. They laughed like always. Smiles that felt untouched, as if time hadn’t passed, as if wounds didn’t exist.

And when the night had nearly ended and people began to leave, Dayanna said something Víctor wasn’t ready to hear:

“I ended it with him… again.”

“Why?” Víctor asked, barely finding his voice.

“Because I love you.”

The silence that followed felt endless.

Víctor felt the ground shift beneath him. Everything he had tried to organize inside himself collapsed in seconds. He couldn’t believe it. Not after everything. Not now. Not just as he was about to leave.

He asked why she was saying it now.

She took his hand. Looked into his eyes.

And when Víctor saw her brown eyes glowing under the moonlight, he could no longer hold back what he felt.

They talked for hours.

No masks.

No fear.

No unnecessary pauses.

They said everything they had held back for years. Every doubt. Every me too. Every it was always you. Every regret for not speaking sooner.

That night, love stopped being a suspicion.

Without warning, they kissed slowly, as if time itself might break if they rushed. Honest kisses, filled with history. Kisses that didn’t seek desire, but recognition—as if each one said: I finally found you.

They loved each other quietly, the way they had always wanted to love. But one of them knew that dawn would bring a painful goodbye.

Because some loves arrive whole…

but arrive late.

And although that night was real, intense, and true, the trip was still waiting. The future was already in motion. And destiny, once again, watched without intervening.

Víctor didn’t have the courage—the words—to tell her about the journey awaiting him the next day.

Not because he didn’t love her, but because he did. Telling her meant accepting the possibility of losing her before she had fully arrived. It meant breaking the perfect moment they had finally reached after years of silence, doubt, and wrong turns.

So he chose to stay quiet.

Not out of selfishness, but fear.

Fear of hurting her.

Fear of seeing her cry.

Fear that love, newly found, would slip through his hands again.

Instead of the truth, he offered a promise.

He spoke of a love that wouldn’t change. Of a we that could survive any distance. He told her that no matter what happened, what they felt would remain intact—that if destiny ever separated them, they would find their way back to each other.

Dayanna listened with an open heart.

She accepted the promise without suspicion. She held him as if securing the future. She smiled like someone who trusts completely.

She didn’t know those words were a goodbye disguised as eternity.

For her, the promise meant waiting.

For him, it meant leaving without breaking.

And there, without either of them realizing it, love began to rest on something fragile: an incomplete truth.

They parted that night believing the same thing—

but understanding very different things.

Dayanna went home convinced love had defeated fear.

Víctor left knowing he would depart alone at dawn.

Some promises aren’t broken by betrayal,

but because they are born without the whole truth.

And although both believed they were protecting each other, they were quietly planting the slowest and deepest pain of all: discovering that what you were protecting… was already leaving.

Dawn didn’t bring peace.

It brought decisions.

Víctor packed his suitcase in silence. Every folded piece of clothing confirmed it. Every object placed inside was a goodbye he didn’t dare to say out loud. The house still slept, but his heart had been awake for hours.

Before leaving, he went to see Justin and Fernando. He didn’t need to explain much. They understood just by looking at him. They hugged tightly, the way people do when they know something important is ending. They cried without shame—because some goodbyes don’t allow pride.

“Take care,” they told him.

And in those words lived everything they didn’t know how to say.

Then Víctor left.

And with that step, he left behind more than he could carry.

The day continued as if nothing had happened.

Hours passed. The world kept moving forward.

Dayanna walked unaware that everything had already changed. The promise still lived in her chest. Love, she believed, was still intact.

Then she saw him.

Justin was sitting alone, crying without trying to hide it.

Something broke before she even asked.

“What happened?” she said, a knot forming in her throat without knowing why.

Justin hesitated.

Some truths are heavy even when they don’t belong to you.

He told her what Víctor couldn’t.

He told her about the trip.

About the goodbye.

About the silence.

The air left her body.

Not after the night before.

Not after the words, the kisses, the promise.

Not after finally choosing each other.

Trembling, she called him.

Víctor answered.

And in that single second, they both knew there was no gentle way left to say anything.

He told her the truth.

All of it.

No excuses.

No masks.

His voice broke as he spoke. He told her how sorry he was. He admitted he hadn’t had the courage. He told her he loved her more than he had ever known how to show—and that leaving didn’t mean loving her less, but not knowing how to stay without destroying everything.

Dayanna cried in silence.

Not because of the trip.

But because of the unintentional lie.

Because of a promise that was never fair.

Because she had loved believing time was on her side.

That day, they understood something terrible and final:

Love was there…

but it no longer lived in the same place for both of them.

Víctor hung up knowing he had done what was necessary—but not what was right.

Dayanna hung up knowing she had loved truly—but without saying goodbye in time.

And that is how distance began.

Not as miles,

but as a wound that never closed.

Time passed the way unspoken things pass: quietly, but leaving marks.

A year had gone by since that call. A year of new cities, unfamiliar routines, long nights, and days that blurred together. Víctor had learned how to survive far away—how to work, how to keep moving forward.

Not how to forget.

One ordinary night, without searching too hard, he found her on social media.

It was her.

Dayanna.

The same name. The same smile—or something close to it. Víctor stared at the screen longer than he should have, as if looking long enough might bring something back from the past.

He wrote carefully, like someone touching a wound without knowing if it had healed.

“How are you?”

The reply came quickly. Simple. Polite.

“Good.”

Just one word.

Saying nothing.

Saying everything.

They spoke little. Short messages. General questions. No accusations. No past. Dayanna answered like someone who had learned not to stay too long anywhere—not even in conversations.

Víctor felt relief and, at the same time, an unease he couldn’t explain. Something didn’t fit. It wasn’t distance. It wasn’t time.

It was the tone.

As if she had learned how to hide—even from herself.

So he asked Justin, searching for confirmation of what his intuition already knew.

And he learned the truth.

Since that last call, Dayanna had changed. Not visibly, but deeply. She had grown quieter. More reserved. Her eyes smiled less. She was no longer the person she had been when she loved without fear.

She wasn’t broken…

but she wasn’t the same.

Víctor understood something that cut straight through him: distance doesn’t only separate bodies—it transforms souls.

She had kept living, yes.

But something had remained suspended in that goodbye that was never clear. In that promise that didn’t know how to wait. In that love spoken when it could no longer be held.

And then he understood the hardest truth of all:

Sometimes we don’t hurt people with what we do,

but with what we fail to say in time.

He closed the conversation without a goodbye. Not from lack of love, but from respect for what he could no longer touch.

And then came the nights that aren’t meant for sleeping.

They are meant for understanding.

After countless nights, countless returns of the past, Víctor made a decision that didn’t come from impulse—but from guilt, love, and a promise that was still alive, even if broken.

He decided to return.

Not to feel better.

Not to ask for forgiveness and disappear again.

But to try to repair what he had broken.

He wanted to become what they had once promised to be—not through words, but through actions. He knew coming back wasn’t enough. Loving wasn’t enough. He needed time, stability, something real to offer beyond feelings that arrived too late.

So he stayed.

Two more years.

He worked relentlessly. Long days. Short nights. He learned how to stand on his own. How not to run when things hurt. Every effort had one purpose: returning without excuses.

He didn’t speak of her.

He didn’t look for her.

He didn’t interfere.

He carried her the way important things are carried: in silence.

When he finally felt ready, he didn’t announce his return.

He didn’t want to create expectations.

He came back like someone returning home, knowing he might not be welcomed.

With a different suitcase.

With less fear.

With more truth.

And though he didn’t know it yet, destiny had already prepared its answer.

Víctor returned changed.

Three years of constant work don’t just change routines—they change the way you look at life. He came back with fewer impulses, more silence, a calm he had never known before. He wasn’t the same man who had left, and deep down, he believed that mattered.

He called her.

When Dayanna answered, her voice sounded different. Lighter. Steadier. There was a quiet happiness in it—one Víctor didn’t remember hearing before. He believed—needed to believe—that it had something to do with his return.

They agreed to meet at a park.

The moment he saw her arrive, he understood what he didn’t want to accept: she had changed too.

It wasn’t just the way she dressed or walked. It was the way she occupied space—like someone who no longer lived waiting. They sat down and spoke first about the surface things: the years, the time, how distant everything felt now.

Víctor felt the moment approaching. He had come back for her. To fulfill what he had never known how to close.

Just as he was about to speak, Dayanna’s phone rang.

She looked at the screen. Hesitated for a second. And answered.

She didn’t need to explain.

Víctor understood everything.

There was someone else.

When she hung up, she took a deep breath and told him calmly what she had built while he was gone. In those two years, she had learned to be alone. To forgive herself. To heal. To stop waiting for calls that never came. And when she was ready, she allowed herself to love again.

Something broke inside Víctor—again.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were with someone?” he asked, pain and desperation tangled in his voice. “I came back for you.”

Dayanna looked at him with clarity—not coldness.

“That was no longer your place,” she said. “I didn’t owe you an explanation about my life. We all keep secrets… and you taught me that when you couldn’t tell me the truth about your trip.”

Her words weren’t cruel.

They were fair.

Víctor couldn’t hold the silence. Everything he had carried for years—the waiting, the effort, the guilt, the hope—collapsed all at once. And when the heart doesn’t know how to defend itself, it attacks.

He told her he hated her.

His voice broke. Tears fell without asking permission. He cursed her in every way he could, as if by doing so he could tear out everything he still felt. Every word was harsh, unfair, exaggerated.

None of them were true.

Because behind every I hate you there was an I love you.

An I need you.

An I love you that no longer had a place to stay.

Dayanna listened in silence.

She didn’t interrupt him.

She didn’t defend herself.

She didn’t cry in front of him.

She understood something Víctor still couldn’t: pain doesn’t justify staying.

He gathered his things clumsily. His hands trembled. He didn’t look back—because he knew that if he did, he wouldn’t have the strength to leave. He walked away with his chest tight, carrying words he never wanted to say, words that escaped only because he didn’t know how to say others.

She didn’t stop him.

Not because it didn’t hurt.

But because she had learned that stopping someone who arrives too late…

is breaking yourself again.

Víctor left believing he had closed the story with hate.

Dayanna stayed knowing what she had heard wasn’t resentment—

but love with no exit.

And that was how the one thing that was never officially theirs ended,

yet marked them for life.

With time, Víctor understood something he once couldn’t accept:

She wasn’t meant for him.

She never was.

Not because there wasn’t love—but because not all love is meant to stay. He remembered every time he said yes to destiny, every attempt to force the moment, every hopeful decision. And still, destiny always answered the same way:

No.

Not as punishment.

As a boundary.

One day, by chance—or by life’s quiet irony—they met again. There was no shock. No reproach. Just two people who once loved each other, now looking at one another with a new calm.

Víctor apologized.

Not to return.

Not to reopen anything.

Just to close what had been left unfinished.

Dayanna listened. Not because it no longer hurt, but because she had learned that listening can also be a way of letting go. The wounds didn’t disappear—but they stopped bleeding. They learned to live with them, the way one learns to live with scars.

They spoke little.

But it was enough.

They made peace.

Not as lovers.

But as two souls who survived what could not be.

Víctor accepted his destiny.

And in doing so, he stopped fighting the past.

Author’s Note

Now it is my turn—Víctor’s turn—to live a life without her.Without Dayanna.

Without the person I loved the most in silence, with fear, with clumsiness, and with my entire heart.

Fate wasn’t cruel.

It was honest.

It allowed me to love her, but not to keep her.

Today I understand that some stories aren’t meant to end together—

they are meant to be written.

And that is why this book exists.

Because even though life separated us, she will always remain here, between these pages. In every word I didn’t know how to say in time. In every memory that refused to die.

I am Víctor.

The boy in this story.

The one who left searching for a future

and returned to find a past that no longer belonged to him.

Dayanna is not with me…but she lives forever in the book I wrote for her.