Hello Stranger

The train ride seemed new to me when we took the route home that night, Chloe sitting opposite with her beautiful smile on her face.

I’d been travelling it daily for nine years straight, but this one was different, just like everything else was seeming to be. Churchley had bright blue benches I’d never noticed before, and one of them had a giggling toddler swinging his legs next to his mum. Eastworth had a rail attendant doubled up laughing with a little old woman and her poodle, and the station at Wenton had a man on his knees at the one on the far right, a paintbrush in his hand as he fixed the missing streak of paint on the door.

A girl was playing hopscotch alongside the corner shop sign on Callow Road while her dad watched her from the awning by the doorway, and the line of oak trees by the Sunnydale Viaduct were fluttering in the breeze.

That’s when I learnt my most valuable lesson of them all – watching the world outside those train windows and knowing in my heart that Chloe was noticing all the very same little snippets as me.

Every moment truly is magical, just so long as your eyes aren’t blind to the wonders.

We arrived at Redwood at the usual time, and those magical moments stretched out the whole walk back, hand in hand with the woman I loved.

They stretched out the whole night through, sitting cuddled up in the armchair together with our noses in two different novels. They stretched out through a joint shower, with Chloe’s glorious hair smothered in foam. They stretched out through me kissing that pretty little wonder from her head to her toes, and sucking her clit as she cried for more. Always more.

Then we slept, right through until morning.

The magical moments continued from the second I opened my eyes and found her held tight in my arms. She yawned and stretched and smiled at me with her freckled face, and I felt my heart break free. Broken free by the love of my life.

“I absolutely love your house,” she said to me as she skipped along to the train the next morning, the white rabbit in her still bursting to run on skittish legs. “I love your bookshelves even better though.”

“I love how you love them,” I laughed.

“I love how I love you,” she giggled back.

I didn’t understand it, just how such love and positivity could come out of a future so bleak, but it did. It was bursting out loud and clear, even so soon after the revelation. It wouldn’t have stopped, even if I’d tried.

That day I was smiling when the woman boarded the train at Eastworth, tapping her phone just like usual. I guess it was a shock to her, to see me smiling in my seat. She almost jumped back on herself, eyes open wide as I held up a hand.

“Hello,” I said.

Her smile was a picture.

“Hello,” she said, and gave me a wave right back.

Chloe’s smile was brighter than anyone’s, grinning across at me like I’d just completed a marathon rather than said some random hello to a woman on a train, but still that overzealous reaction didn’t hold back that strange little glow inside.

The man with the messy blond beard didn’t curse under his breath at Newstone as he tried to find his rail pass. Not today. Not when he saw my smile as I held up a hand to him, wishing him a good morning as he passed my seat.

The elderly woman at Churchley ditched her permanent scowl when I offered her a hello as she boarded, grinning right back at me from under her garish floral scarf and nodding her head.

“Hello there.”

Chloe didn’t comment while I was dishing out my greetings. Not at all. She dug herself deep into her novel, or tried to, even though I knew her mind was all on me.

I could see it in those fidgety feet, dithering around on the carriage floor in the way I loved so much. I could see it in the burst of colour on her freckled cheeks, and the way her fingers were so quick as they turned the pages.

The Sea Priestess.

She was reading The Sea Priestess. Another one of my favourite novels of all time.

She cleared her throat when we approached Harrow and her eyes were dancing with mischief, a pretty little joke in her smile as she raised her cover to show me.

Oh, the memories.

I raised mine up at her, still in those same seats on that same journey, just like when she didn’t even know my name

Moon Magic. I was reading Moon Magic.

“That’s my favourite novel of all time,” she said, with that same mischief in her smile.

“What a coincidence,” I replied, but she shook her head.

“Not a coincidence, Dr Logan Hall,” she said to me. “It’s fate.”