Between Stops
a short story
a quiet romance · a five-minute read
The 7:40 train bounced along the tracks, shaking me like loose change. Screeching wheels on metal and the crowded car’s murmurs filled the space. I was sitting where I always did: the invisible corner of the train, furthest from the doors, staring between shoulders, backs, and elbows to catch a glimpse of the window opposite my seat. It was dark—we were underground, of course—and there was never anything to see, but I always watched the dusky brick wall pass by anyway.
The car smelled of coffee. Over half of the passengers held a cup, including the person seated across from me. The cup in her hands was unusual—the lid was blue, instead of the normal, bland cream or green.
As I looked up, we made brief eye contact. I turned away quickly, going back to staring out the window while passengers swayed in front of me, partially blocking my view.
A blue lid. It threw me off. The cup itself was the same boring white as every other cup on the train, the same Starbucks logo printed on it. The only blue lid in the car.
Every day since, I’d seen her on the way to work. Like me, she always sat in the same seat, right between me and my view of the nothing going on outside the train. The whites of her eyes stood out against the darkness in the window behind her.
She opened the lid, then lifted the cup to her lips and took a sip. The weak overhead light of the train caught on a small nose piercing.
As she lowered the cup once more, we met eyes for the second time. Something fluttered within me, like a gentle breeze catching the edge of a book’s page.
I looked away again, but felt her gaze linger. Soon enough she was scrolling on her phone.
Two weeks. First it was a glance, then prolonged eye contact, then a smile. Time turned to honey in those moments.
With each passing day, the wind picked up, flipping book pages. Before I knew it, what had once been a gentle breeze turned into a storm. I looked for her every single time I stepped onto the train.
No longer did I search the passing brick outside for entertainment, and I didn’t want to. Instead, I kept my eyes on that blue lid, hoping my peripheral vision would catch her looking back at me. Beneath the lid, the cup would change. Sometimes Starbucks, sometimes blank, sometimes carrying the logo of a small café. But the lid was always blue. It was her own lid; one she used no matter the coffee she was drinking.
The train jolted, throwing me against my seat’s left armrest. Across from me and two seats down, a man’s hot coffee spilled on his lap. I glanced at the sealed blue lid. She was tapping away at her phone, the cup forgotten between her knees.
We hit the next stop. She stood up, breaking my stupor. A slow tide of people finding their way in and out of the car cut off my line of sight.
When everything died down, she was close. Standing within a few feet of me, one hand on her coffee, the other overhead, holding onto one of the handles hanging from the ceiling. Where she normally sat was a pregnant woman. She’d given up her seat.
She smelled vaguely of sunscreen.
I shifted my gaze to my feet, trying to ignore the heat in my face. We hadn’t said a word. The next stop came, and she got off the train, just like always. And yet, for some reason, I felt accomplished.
It was a Friday. She wasn’t there, with her blue-lidded coffee.
Her seat was instead filled by a clone of anyone else on the train—an older, heavy-set man in a gray suit, with a briefcase between his polished shoes. The coffee cup in his hand was all white, save for the thin strip of cardboard around its center. Boring. I watched the passing brick wall instead of him.
It surprised me how distracted I was by her absence. I didn’t know her age, her hobbies, her job… only that she owned a blue lid.
That day, instead of a warm breeze or a storm of excitement, the wind inside of me was frigid. It flapped at the book’s pages as if to rip them out. I caught myself checking the doors at every stop, hoping to see she’d just been late.
She never came back. I reverted to staring out the window, though my eyes kept wandering back to the seat she used to fill. Every time, I would see a mundane lid.
I’d expected to see her again the next Monday. I’d walked onto the train, head high, looking between shoulders to see her seat. Nothing.
For a couple of weeks after, I hoped to see her return. After a month, I no longer had a clear memory of what she looked like.
The train’s screeching wheels echoed throughout the tunnel, muffled by the car’s walls. Shadowy brick passed on the other side of the window across from my seat. The wind was gone.
The intercom buzzed, announcing my stop. My body was pulled by the slowing train, and the armrest dug into my side.
I stood when everyone else did. A chime played throughout the car as the doors opened and let the sharp sounds of the outside world in. I waited for everyone else to step off before following; I didn’t like fighting the crowd.
As I approached the doors, I was hit with cool air, drifting in from the station. I emerged from the train and into a surge of people moving this way and that, none paying attention, all with a phone in one hand, a coffee in the other. Each cup’s lid was either cream or green.
The train’s doors chimed again. I pushed through the crowd, making my way to the stairs that would put me on ground level. It was a five-minute walk to work from the station.
I caught a whiff of a familiar scent. Slowing down, I tried to place it.
Sunscreen.
I spun in a circle. There were too many people. I couldn’t see.
My mouth was dry.
The scent was gone. She was gone.
My head dropped to my chest. As it did, I caught a glimpse of blue. My eyes snapped up. A blue lid.
Eight steps. I didn’t want to take them, but my feet moved anyway. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. What was there to say? She’d been some person on the train; someone I only recognized because of the color of their cup’s lid. She would call me a creep.
I tapped her shoulder.
She stopped and turned.
It wasn’t her.
7:40. I stepped onto the train the same as any other day. Keeping my eyes low, I walked through the sea of cream and green before settling into my corner seat.
I frowned.
Someone sat across from me, blocking the window. They fidgeted with a cup. With a blue lid.
She was watching me. Her eyes dropped to her lap as soon as I met them.
It was her.
The train slowed, and I realized I’d been staring. It was her stop.
People streamed through the car. I stood up. When the commotion settled, I was standing in front of her seat, holding onto a handle hanging from the ceiling. She hadn’t moved.
We met eyes.
“Hi,” I said.
She smiled.