She was so lost in thought and the song hammering through her headphones that she didn't even notice the Q barreling towards them; not until her hair began whipping against her eyelids in that sudden gust of wind that accompanies trains. Metal doors slid open to regurgitate passengers, warm bodies spewing onto the platform. She pushed past the sudden flood of people and slid into a faded orange seat, the worn plastic still slightly warm from its last passenger. She settled back, sinking in between the puffer jacket-clad arms clutching Candy Crush on either side of her and retraced her previous train of thought.
It's funny, how life can kind of sneak up on you. Years flash by before you've had the chance to taste them- but then there are those moments that seem to stretch on endlessly. Defining pauses that are at once a heartbeat and a lifetime. When you can draw a breath and just take it all in, for a second, before you're blown back into the whirlwind on your own exhale.
Her eyelids were shut, dark lashes forming crescent shadows on her pale face. To an onlooker, she was just another city girl who'd dozed off on her commute home; but as she drew in her breath, she tasted an old moment. One that had been lost in its own ordinariness.
Laying in bed one afternoon, it could have been a Wednesday or a Sunday- that's not what she remembered. What she remembered was her cheek on his chest, and the magic way the afternoon sunlight had of filtering through the half-drawn roman blinds. Feeling him chuckling, with his lips pressed against her hair and wondering how anything else had ever felt right. How absolute she used to be in her belief that anything other than her precious personal space would feel wrong.
Her space has always been sacred. It was hers- why would she want to look at her old suede sofa and see curly hair and a flash of white teeth? To tumble into bed and feel instead hands on her hips, fingertips grazing skin? Why, when she could revel in her solitude? In bare feet padding across an old wooden floor through shafts of sunlight, her fingers wrapped around the warmth of her favorite mug?
But now it feels foreign to her, to pull out one mug instead of two. She always hated wasting time- now she spends entire days in a tiny apartment tucked away into the city doing nothing more than appreciating his company and listening to the cars pass by. Hours swallowed in a languidness that feels like luxury.
Her eyelids fluttered open as the doors rattled back again, and she allowed herself to be washed out with the flow of suited men and women; stepping around the children clutching little backpacks, chins trembling with the threat of a wail for their after-school snacks. They all spilled out onto the street, flooding into the traffic. Every body, car, and bicycle like a water molecule competing for space- an ocean straining through a fire hose. She disappeared into the sea of headphones, each body moving to its own beat.
She exhaled.