They didn't have a five-year plan.
Not anymore.
The Excel spreadsheets, the vision boards, the color-coded timelines — all those things had slowly faded into the background. In their place were handwritten sticky notes on the fridge that read:
Today: buy pears.
Remember to breathe.
You are enough.
Their life no longer followed a syllabus. It unraveled like a poem — stanzas of study, of silence, of burnt dinners and accidental naps curled up on the couch with the rain whispering against the window.
Ezra didn't regret turning down the extension.
Not when he woke up with Talia's hair tangled against his chest. Not when she started reading her new short story aloud to him, one page at a time, voice raw and unsure, but full of truth. Not when he sat across from her in the university library and watched her lips move as she annotated case studies and fictional lives with equal intensity.
Geneva had become less of a detour, and more of a doorway.
They'd found a rhythm. A slow one. Intentional.
Talia didn't need to party every weekend anymore. She didn't need the noise to feel alive.
And Ezra — well, he was learning how to be less afraid of change, less obsessed with control. He still organized their pantry alphabetically, but he also kissed her mid-sentence, learned to dance in the kitchen even when the music sucked, and sometimes, let the dishes wait until the morning.
One night, during a thunderstorm, she asked him:
"Do you ever wonder what would've happened if I hadn't talked to you in that anatomy class?"
Ezra chuckled, arms wrapped around her under the blanket. "You mean after I ghosted you?"
She gave him a playful shove. "Yes, after that."
He smiled softly. "I think I would've always found my way to you. Even if we'd missed each other back then. Even if it took years."
Talia tilted her head. "You believe that?"
"I believe that some people aren't meant to be chapters. They're meant to be the margins, the ink, the breath between lines."
She kissed him gently. "That's poetic for a guy who once organized his sock drawer by fiber content."
"People grow," he whispered against her skin. "Especially when they're loved right."
They planned less and dreamed more.
Talks of what came next were no longer framed in anxiety, but in curiosity.
Maybe they'd apply to that dual residency in France next year. Maybe they'd travel more — Italy, Greece, the quiet countryside of Spain.
Maybe Talia would finally publish her collection of essays. Maybe Ezra would teach one day — medicine through the lens of humanity, not just the coldness of data.
They didn't know.
But they were okay not knowing.
Because the space in between decisions — that breath between "maybe" and "yes" — that's where they had built something unshakable.
On their two-year anniversary, they returned to the rooftop where everything changed.
It was just before sunset. The sky was peach and lavender, blurring into indigo at the edges.
Ezra pulled out a worn envelope.
"What's this?" Talia asked.
"A letter," he said. "For you."
She opened it slowly. Inside was a single sentence, in his unmistakable, neat handwriting.
If I had to do it all again — the ghosting, the fights, the mistakes — I would. Just to end up here. With you.
Talia pressed the note to her chest. "You're getting sappier by the day."
"And you're still pretending to be emotionally unavailable when I know you cried at that dog commercial yesterday."
She laughed, but her eyes shimmered.
Then she reached into her pocket and handed him a tiny, folded square of paper.
"Your turn."
Ezra opened it.
You are the only constant in a life that has changed a hundred times over. I hope I never stop discovering you.
They stood in silence, the wind lifting the ends of their coats, the city glowing beneath them.
Home wasn't a place. It was this.
Two hands.
One quiet love.
And the spaces in between, where they chose each other—over and over again.