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The academy

Hey, Allie,

I keep catching myself wondering about the smallest things. If you’re sleeping enough, if your classes are overwhelming you, if you still drink your morning coffee too hot because you’re impatient. I don’t know why my mind holds onto these details, but it does. Maybe because they remind me of you in a way nothing else can.

I hope you won’t mind that I chose a handwritten letter instead of something quicker. There’s something strangely comforting about the scratch of a pen on paper. Maybe it’s foolish, but somehow writing this way makes me feel closer to you, even if the distance between us hasn’t changed.

The academy keeps me busy. The work is demanding, full of moments where I’m forced to learn who I am under pressure. And yet, every time I walk back to my dorm late in the evening, I find myself imagining what it would be like if your campus were just a few streets away. How easily I’d slip out just to meet you, even if only for ten minutes.

The guys here go out for drinks after long days, and sometimes I go with them. But even then, part of me drifts somewhere else… somewhere quieter. Somewhere with the soft hum of a bookstore and the way you push your hair behind your ear when you find a passage you love. I miss that version of the world. The one that exists when you’re in it.

I’m learning a lot, more than I expected. How to read people, how to move when the moment demands it, how to hold myself steady when instinct tells me to run. My instructors say I’m doing well, that I might be ready to apply for rookie positions soon. That should feel like an achievement. And it does… but it also lights this impatient ache in me.

Because all progress means, to me, is that I’m one step closer to coming home. To seeing you again.

Your blue eyes.

Love,
Gabriel