Hello Stranger

My new job depended on it.

I flicked off the bedside lamp and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. The tumble of Behemoth danced with the stranger’s face in my thoughts. Both of them spinning and whirling.

I wondered where he lived and where he was going on the train that morning, and if I’d ever see him again.

I wondered if I’d ever find the courage to ask him the question I hadn’t been brave enough to voice out loud.

What is your favourite novel?

I didn’t know if I could ever summon up the voice to ask him that.

Even the thought gave me tingles in my tummy.

Before I finally got some sleep, I made myself a promise. A real promise that I’d really keep to myself. Cross my heart.

I promised that when I got on the train in the morning I’d walk right the way through from beginning to end, and if I saw him there, the beautiful bookworm stranger, I’d sit by him. As close as I could get.

Then one day, maybe – maybe even that same day, I’d ask him the question.

What is your favourite novel?

I realised just how much of an idiot I’d been when the alarm went off the next morning and I pressed snooze one too many times. Liam was already long gone to work when I shot out of bed like a crazy and pulled my clothes on and dashed out of the front door.

But still, I found time for one thing.

One thing I couldn’t do without, even if it meant a literal sprint all the way to the train station.

I was still tugging my sweater down over my new blue blouse as I raced through the streets, but I had my next novel gripped tight under my arm, and my bookmark was pride of place within the front cover.

The train was already at the platform when I dashed up the stairs. I darted onto the nearest carriage and the whistle sounded barely seconds after.

My heart was racing. Thumping like a drum roll, and I told myself that was because of the rush and the race and the stupidity of me oversleeping. But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t just that.

I collected my breath before I started my walk through the carriages. I acted as casually as I could as I made my way up the aisle, checking out every single person who was sitting there. But I wasn’t casual. I felt anything but casual. Every step felt tickly and weird.

Just not as tickly and weird as my tummy felt when I saw him sitting there, at the end of the second carriage.

And nowhere near as tickly and weird as my tummy felt when he did a double take and looked up at me with those crazy serious eyes of his.

The seat opposite him was empty. Thank you, universe.

I felt like a complete clutz as I dropped myself into it, and I knew my cheeks were on fire as he stared across at me.

It was the moment of truth. The moment I pushed myself past the self-made promise to sit near to him, and actually said something. Even something pathetic. Just anything. So I did it. Mustered up the courage and spat it out before he looked away.

“Hello,” I said.

I said hello to the stranger.

My heart was racing, and my breaths were fast to match, but I said it.

I said hello to the stranger.

My heart flew to the sky when the stranger smiled.

“Hello,” he said right back.7LoganShe was a burst of energy amongst the morning commuter monotony as she plonked her backside down in the seat opposite me. She blew a stray twist of hair from her forehead, and then she spoke – one simple little word accompanied by one of the brightest smiles I’d ever seen.

“Hello.”

It may have been one simple word, but it was more than that in the making.

I’d seen her approaching along the aisle of the carriage and checking out every seat. I’d seen the halt in her step as she’d seen me sitting there, minding my own business with my book in my hands.

“Hello,” I said.

The contrast was palpable between us. Her smile was brighter than the morning sun and mine was concrete. Cold. Steadfast in its grounding.

Yet, that contrast worked.

It was inexplicable just how her buzz of life gelled with the overall flatness of death in my world, but it did.

It worked. Nonsensical and illogical to the extreme – but it worked.

She pulled a different paperback from under her arm and flicked it open on her lap. Another one well read.

Her bookmark was in the cover, pinned tight. I could still feel the cracked leather, soft between my fingers.

I tried to push my attention back to Master, but it wasn’t working. Not with the flicker of her eyes in my direction every time she shifted her knees.