The Train Window

He was staring out of the train window, his expression distant, as though his thoughts were somewhere far beyond the station’s railway tracks. He looked older, but not by much. The familiar furrow between his brows remained—the same small crease that appeared when he was thinking too hard, the one she used to smooth away with her fingertips.

Emily’s fingers twitched against her paper coffee cup, her mind racing through the possibilities. Should she get up? Wave? Call his name?

But she didn’t move. Instead, she watched him the way she used to, quietly, observing him in the way only someone who once loved him could. Her eyes traced the familiar lines of his face, the shape of his jaw, the way his lips parted slightly as though he were about to speak.

And then, as if he could feel her gaze, David turned his head towards her. He blinked, his expression shifting—recognition, surprise, something deeper.

Her train lurched forward. She saw his lips part wider, the distance swallowing the words he might have been about to say. She held his gaze for as long as she could, watching as he disappeared out of sight.

Emily dropped her head against the glass. In another life, she might have jumped off the train. In another life, she might have smiled and said hello.

But not this life.

She let him become a memory again, left behind on a station in a city she would soon pass through and forget.