The Distance Between Two Rings

The first time Kaya met Eren, he was holding a plastic bag of mangoes as if it were evidence.

Not dramatic evidence, no blood, no fingerprints—just mangoes, bruised and leaking sweetness onto his palm, like the fruit had decided it was tired of keeping secrets.

“You dropped this,” he said.

Kaya blinked at him. She stood at the edge of the market where everything smelled like charcoal smoke and fried dough and sun-warmed dust. Somewhere behind her, a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) revved like it wanted to join the negotiation.

“I didn’t drop it,” Kaya said.

Eren lifted his eyebrows, delighted. “Then,” he said carefully, “the mangoes are lying.”

Kaya stared at the bag again. It was definitely hers. She had bought it ten minutes ago with money folded into a square and tucked into her bra because the market was not a place for naïveté. The bag must have slipped when she turned to avoid a goat with suspicious intentions.

She took it from him, and her mouth—betraying her—said, “Why are you carrying my mangoes?”

Eren smiled like he’d been waiting all day to be accused of mango-related crimes. “Because I’m trying to make a good first impression.”

“First impression for what?”

“For you,” he said, then looked mildly surprised at how honest it sounded.

Kaya felt the air shift—not mystical, just familiar, the way a moment becomes a memory while it’s still happening.

“Well,” she said, lifting the bag, “thank you for returning my lying mangoes.”

Eren nodded. “Any time. I’m Eren.”

“Kaya.”

He paused. “Kaya. Like the bird.”

Kaya laughed once, sharp and surprised. “Not like the bird. Like my name.”

He raised both hands. “Noted. Your name is not a bird. Your mangoes are liars. And I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m doing it anyway.”

Kaya should have walked away. She had errands. She had people who expected her home before dusk and cousins who would ask why she was smiling like she’d swallowed good news.

But the market was loud and hot and full of small tragedies, and this stranger with mango juice on his palm felt like a gentle interruption.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I’m… visiting,” he said. “Working on a project.”

Kaya waited.

He cleared his throat. “Health research,” he admitted. “Mostly, I’m learning I know nothing.”

Kaya nodded sympathetically. “That is a very good place to start.”

He laughed, and the laugh made him look less like a visitor and more like a person who could belong somewhere if given the chance.

“Can I buy you tea?” he asked, too quickly, as the question might spoil.

“You already bought me mangoes.”

“I recovered your mangoes,” Eren corrected. “Like a mango rescuer. Like… a fruit hero.”

Kaya’s smile widened against her will. “You cannot be a fruit hero and also a serious person.”

“Good,” Eren said, relieved. “Because I’m not sure I can be serious.”

Time folded toward evening the way it always did—quick, careless, unstoppable.

“Okay,” Kaya said. “Tea.”

They sat on plastic chairs outside a small shop that sold tea so strong it could wake up a tired spirit. The owner stared at them with calm judgment, like she’d seen a thousand beginnings and knew not all of them ended in weddings.

Eren tried to sip his tea and burned his tongue immediately.

“Ah,” he said, blinking hard. “This tea is… confident.”

Kaya laughed into her cup. “It’s not confident. It’s honest.”

“In my country,” Eren said, fanning his mouth, “tea is politely warm.”

“In my country,” Kaya replied, “tea is a conversation. It will not whisper.”

They talked like that—about nothing and everything—until the light softened, and Eren checked his phone like it was an apology.

“Trouble?” Kaya asked.

“No,” he said. “Just… a friend.”

Kaya raised one eyebrow.

Eren sighed. “My friend thinks I should be networking, not… drinking tea.”

“With a stranger,” Kaya finished.

“With a stranger who rescued her own mangoes from herself,” Eren said.

Kaya leaned back. “Tell your friend to network with his own tea.”

Eren’s smile was slow and genuine. “I like you,” he said, then looked surprised he’d said it out loud.

Kaya felt the words land somewhere tender. She tried to be casual and failed.

“I like you too,” she said.

They were not in love that day.

But something opened.

And once something opens, it becomes very hard to convince it to close.

When I went to Nsuzi, I told myself I was going for work.

I did not tell myself I was going to meet someone who would rearrange the inside of me with one laugh. I did not tell myself I would end up counting time in phone calls.

The first time Kaya gave me her number, she said it like a warning.

“If you call,” she said, “don’t call with nonsense.”

I promised her I wouldn’t.

Then I called her three days later and said, “I miss your tea.”

And she said, “My tea does not belong to you.”

And I said, “I miss your honesty.”

She was quiet for a second, then said, “That is better.”

We started like that, small, brave, ridiculous.

But work has a calendar, and calendars are rude.

Soon, my flight home was a date stamped onto my life.

I told her two days before I left. Not because I wanted to surprise her, but because I was afraid that if I said it too early, I would grieve in advance.

We sat on the same plastic chairs by the tea shop.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

“When?”

“Friday.”

She nodded once. Then, quietly: “You were always going to leave.”

It wasn’t cruel. It was a fact.

Shame rose in my throat, not because I was leaving, but because I felt the weight of being someone who arrives and then returns to safety, leaving other people with the silence.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

Kaya looked at me. Really looked. “Wanting is easy,” she said. “Staying is the story.”

I tried to turn pain into a plan. “We can talk. We can call. We can—”

Kaya lifted a hand. “We can,” she agreed. “But understand what you’re asking. Long distance is not romance. It is logistics.”

I laughed because she was right, and her honesty was mercy.

“Okay,” I said. “Logistics.”

She leaned forward. “If you disappear,” she said, “don’t return with poetry. Return with an apology.”

“I won’t disappear,” I promised.

She studied me, measuring the strength of my words.

Then she said, “Okay.”

Not trust. Not belief.

Just: okay.

That word was a door.

And I walked through it.

The night he left, the city felt like it had swallowed its own music.

Even the dogs sounded quieter, embarrassed to bark while my chest did its own private wailing.

I did not cry at the airport. Not because I was strong—because I was stubborn. There are places you don’t give your tears away unless you have to.

I went home and cleaned until my hands were tired enough to stop shaking.

Then my phone buzzed.

I’m on the plane. I hate it. The tea will be polite now.

I stared at the screen until the letters blurred and replied:

Don’t insult your tea. It didn’t do anything.

Three dots.

Then:

I miss the market. I miss your laugh. I miss the mangoes.

I typed:

The mangoes miss you, too. But they won’t admit it.

And that was how it began.

Not with a grand declaration.

With mangoes pretending they didn’t care.

Long distance is made of small things: a voice note in the dark, a photo of rain on his window, a message that says, I saw something, and I wanted you to see it too.

At first, it was easy. Newness carried us as a song carries you, even when you don’t know the lyrics.

Then distance did what distance does.

It turned ordinary days into hunger.

It happened on a Tuesday.

He called. I answered.

“How are you?”

I performed. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

The house was too quiet. Quiet that lets your thoughts echo.

“I’m tired,” I admitted.

“I’m tired too,” he said. “It’s been a week.”

“It’s been more than a week.”

Silence.

The wrong sentence rose. I tried to swallow it.

It escaped anyway.

“I can’t do this forever.”

Something delicate cracked.

“What do you mean?” he asked carefully.

“I need to know we’re moving somewhere,” I said, trying to soften what I’d already sharpened. “I need to know I’m not just… waiting.”

“I’m not asking you to wait,” he said.

“But that’s what I’m doing.”

His voice tightened, defensive in a suit. “I’m working. I’m trying to build a life we can step into.”

Anger arrived fast because it always arrived when I felt small. “And I’m not building? I’m not carrying my life while holding yours in the same hands?”

“Kaya—”

And because I was tired, because hunger makes you reckless, I said the wrong thing:

“Maybe you should find someone closer.”

The sentence hung like smoke.

He didn’t speak for a long time.

When he finally did, his voice was quiet. “Do you want me to?”

My stomach dropped.

“No,” I whispered. “No. I didn’t mean that.”

But the damage had been done. Even closed doors show cracks.

“I can’t be your punching bag,” he said gently. “I love you, but I can’t—”

So I did the hardest thing.

I stopped talking.

I listened.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m not disappearing. But we need to fight the distance, not each other.”

My tears came quietly, like rain that didn’t want attention.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m hungry. Not for food. For you.”

Silence again.

Then he said, “Okay.”

And in that one word, I heard not romance, not perfection, but willingness.

After that Tuesday, I started carrying my phone like it was fragile glass.

I did what my brain knew how to do: I became practical.

I created a shared calendar and labeled it something embarrassingly sincere: US.

Every Sunday, we set call times that respected her mornings and my evenings.

I sent her silly things on purpose: a photo of a cat on a mailbox with the caption, That giant you saw would not survive this.

She replied with a voice note, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

I learned that laughter could be rope.

Long distance reveals who you are when you can’t perform the easy parts. No hugs. No flowers. No showing up to fix it with your body.

Just your words.

Your follow-through.

Your ability to apologize without turning it into a courtroom.

Then my mother called.

“So,” she said, “are you serious about this girl?”

“She’s not a girl,” I said automatically. “She’s Kaya.”

My mother hummed. “Serious.”

“I’m serious.”

“Then stop treating the future like a cloud,” she said. “Clouds don’t move when you want them to. Marriage is a decision. Not a mood.”

That night, I called Kaya.

She answered, suspicious. “Why are you calling without warning?”

“Because I’m tired of pretending I can schedule everything.”

Her voice softened. “Are you okay?”

My heart pounded like I was back in the market with mango juice in my hand.

“Kaya,” I said, “I want to close the distance.”

Silence.

“That is a nice sentence,” she said. “It is also vague.”

I laughed. “Fair.”

“I mean it like this,” I said. “I’m not asking you to wait forever. I’m asking you to build with me. For real. Not as a someday. As a plan.”

Her breath caught.

“And,” I added, because truth was running now, “I want to marry you.”

She didn’t speak.

Then, very quietly: “You don’t even know if my mother likes you.”

Relief and laughter spilled out of me. “That’s your first concern?”

“My mother likes nobody,” she said. “But she respects effort.”

“I have effort,” I said. “I have spreadsheets.”

She laughed fully then, and the laugh felt like sunlight on a cold day.

“Okay,” she said again.

And I understood what her okay meant.

I’m here.

I’m choosing.

I’m not running.

When he visited again months later, the city looked at him differently.

Not because he had changed—though he had, walking like someone who understood the ground—but because I had changed.

I introduced him with my whole chest.

“This is Eren,” I told my family. “He is not a tourist. He is not a project. He is my person.”

My cousin leaned in. “Big words.”

“Big love,” I whispered back.

My mother stared at him for a long time, then said, “You are tall.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered politely.

“Tall men sometimes think height is character.”

“I agree,” he said, swallowing.

I almost burst out laughing, but held it like a secret.

That week, my mother tested him in small ways: carry water, peel matoke (steamed green bananas), and answer questions that were really inspections.

He met them with honesty and humility, and sometimes fear, which my mother respected more than confidence.

Later, after everyone slept, we sat outside under the sky.

The distance had shrunk, but it hadn’t vanished. There were still visas and jobs and seasons waiting to be negotiated.

I rested my head on his shoulder.

“This is the part I was hungry for,” I murmured.

“Me too,” he said, kissing my forehead.

I remembered that Tuesday—the wrong sentence, the silence, the apology—and realized:

Long distance didn’t break us.

It taught us how to hold.

How to speak carefully.

How to return.

How to fight the weather without turning on each other.

I smiled into the night. “If we ever have children,” I said, “we will tell them our love started with lying mangoes.”

He chuckled. “They were not lying. They were… destiny fruit.”

“And they will roll their eyes and say, ‘Mom, please.’”

He squeezed my hand. “And we’ll say, ‘Listen. Love is logistics.’”

I looked up at the stars that had watched me wait and watched me choose.

“We made it,” I said softly.

“We’re making it,” he corrected gently.

And that was the story.

Not a fantasy of forever without effort.

But the daily decision to close the distance, again and again—until the gap became a bridge, and the bridge became home.