Hello Stranger

It was something weird. Something that gave me shivery flutters.

Something about the stranger on the train.

I tried to sit in with Liam and chat through his day, but he wasn’t interested.

He ate some dinner I made up, with his plate on his lap on the sofa. Then had a couple of beers and sat watching some shit on TV after finishing up his crappy online game.

I had my feet up on the sofa next to him, and my book in my hands while the TV blared away in the background.

This allegedly passed as the pinup of a relationship in your early twenties with the guy you claimed to love at high school, and my optimism was convinced I was loving life.

Except I wasn’t.

My mantra of this is great, I love it, just wasn’t cutting it that night. I was just trying to convince myself it was.

The words on the pages of Gone with the Wind were blurring and I couldn’t keep my head clear. It was muddled. Really muddled.

Eventually, I gave up.

I rubbed the leather of my bookmark between my fingers and thanked the universe again for bringing it back. But it wasn’t the universe I had to thank this time, was it? It was the stranger on the train.

The stranger with the folded corner paperback.

The stranger who was different to anyone else I’d ever met, even though I’d only known him for one random train journey.

Liam didn’t notice when I got up from the sofa and headed over to my bookshelf wall at the back of the room. I pushed Gone with the Wind back into its slot and knelt down lower, my finger brushing the spines, until it stopped in place.

The Master and Margarita.

There it was.

There was a tingle of a glow as I held that book in my hands. Behemoth and the Devil and Pontius Pilate. Nobody I’d ever met as par for the course in my daily life had ever read it. Nobody ever knew what the hell I was talking about, let alone finished up a quote with me.

I wondered what else he might know quotes to.

I scanned my paperback collection and wondered just how many of the same books were stacked in his.

“Babe, get me another beer while you’re up, will you?”

Liam’s voice cut through my pondering. I shot a glance back his way and saw his hand in the air, so lazy.

I didn’t even bother replying tonight, just headed on through to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil for myself. I flicked open Master to the title page and slipped my bookmark in ready, and I read.

I read all the while I was making a tea and taking enough sips to finish it. I read propped against the kitchen counter, without caring for how bruised and battered my feet were beneath me.

I sank into the Patriarch’s Pond with Professor Woland, and smiled to myself at hog-sized Behemoth, and I loved it. I loved every word.

“Babe! Where’s my beer?” I heard, but ignored it, just kept turning the pages.

“Fine, I’ll get it myself,” I heard a few minutes later, as Liam came bursting in, but I didn’t care.

“Bloody books,” he groaned as he headed on out.

I didn’t bother sitting back down on the sofa with the guy who’d never met Behemoth or the Devil and would never meet them in his life. I got ready for bed, picking up the book every chance I got between stages. It was at the side of the bathroom sink while I showered, and face down on my bed while I changed. It was it in my grip, being consumed under the covers, until Liam came bursting in there too.

“Still bloody reading?” he asked, and I managed a nod. “Can we get some dark, please?”

I checked the time.

Gone midnight.

I should give him dark, but I didn’t want to. Couldn’t bear to leave the words.

He knew it and rolled over with a groan.

“Fine, just keep going, then.”

He rolled away and pulled the covers up around his head, and I kept going.

I kept on going right the way until I was done. Until I reached The End.

My heart was beating happy. My soul was alive. The words were my everything.

My head was full of Russia and the Devil’s midnight ball, and I wanted to be there.

I knew I was an absolute idiot when I checked the time on my phone and set the alarm for the morning. Day three of my new job looming and I was awake into the early hours, like a complete moron. But this was it. This was always it. Disorganisation, and lateness, and not getting to sleep on time. I’d been like this since a tiny girl, battling my parents constantly over reading past bedtime, and I’d never stopped.

I’d never stopped but I needed to. Right now, I needed to.