Page 18 of Our Stop

Coffee Spill Girl: So what, you don’t like big romantic gestures? I thought you might appreciate the time it takes to craft an advert witty enough to get chosen for publication … (although, I see that in writing back you’re more of a romantic than you’re letting on ) Anyway, I’ve got dark hair, my mother thinks I’m ‘quite handsome, but must shave properly’, and am always in the last carriage, because it’s the least crowded. I promise to say hi in person if you do. From Train Guy x

Nadia smiled, instantly looking up to see if anybody was trying to get her attention. It was agreatnote – he was flirting! He wasn’t afraid of her! Well, of Emma, anyway. He’d seen the humour in what Emma had sent in and was showing her that he knew how to spar a little too. That was super-hot to Nadia. She loved a little verbal rough-and-tumble.

Her eyes roved around the carriage, waiting for the moment that would change everything. Maybe this really would be the morning they bunked off, that they took that walk.

It seemed more crowded than usual. The reason Nadia had resolved in the first place to get up earlier and get to the station for the 7.30 tube was that it didn’t usually get properly busy until after eight. How was she supposed to figure out who the author was when everyone was shoulder-to-shoulder, crammed in like beans in a can?

She scanned the faces she could see.

What would Emma tell me to do?she asked herself. Emma would tell her to swallow her pride and be brave. That’s why they were friends, after all – Emma brought out that side of Nadia.

Right, Nadia thought to herself.Brave.

Nadia pushed back her shoulders and inhaled and lifted her face so that it faced the carriage, fully. She decided to stand up from where she’d taken the last empty seat, and move towards the doors. The guy said he was normally beside the doors, so that’s where she’d go.

Her heart beat so hard in her chest that she thought it might launch out of her body and fall at her feet.

Hmmm, she thought, blood pulsing in her ears. Somebody had already slid in under her – before she’d barely finished standing – to steal her seat. She looked left and right.But does he mean the far single door at either end, or the big middle doors?She decided on the big middle doors. Nadia folded the paper as she walked, swaying into people’s armpits, but hoping that in keeping it under her arm, the page turned out at theMissed Connectionspage, it might act as a bit of a sign. A good omen.

Two men nearby could fit the description of ‘dark hair, handsome if shaved’. Holding onto the poles above her head for balance, Nadia peered through the suspended arms, and as a few people trickled out at Moorgate she found the room to manoeuvre next to one of the men. He was tall, and broad, and actually probably didn’t need to shave in order to be handsome. He had the sort of aesthetic that wouldn’t go amiss on the BBC at 9 p.m. on a Sunday, the sort of look of a man who knew how to live in the Amazon for three years with only a pocket knife and a piece of string, or who would look good in a bobble hat with snow in his eyelashes, somewhere in the Arctic, saying soothing things about penguins.

Nadia steadied herself. He wasgorgeous.Like, properly gorgeous. Was this her guy? She took in his pressed shirt and dark suit and shiny shoes. He was super corporate-looking – she wouldn’t normally go in for a guy who looked like he had a housekeeper who did his ironing – but that was no reason to totally dismiss someone. She racked her brain for something to say, for a witty and kind opening line – the kind that he’d incorporate into his speech when they married, and everyone would agree, ‘Oh! That’s so Nadia! Of course he loved her right from the start!’

The man shifted his gaze and looked in her direction, half smiling. Nadia realized she’d been staring. She grinned manically back, and then saw the glint of gold above his head, where he was holding onto the pole. Third finger. Left hand. He was married.

Nadia looked away.

Not him, she thought, pressing down the thought that a) she was disappointed, and that b) his marriage was inconvenient, but not wholly problematic.

Yes, it bloody is, she coached herself, internally.Stop self-sabotaging. No more married men – not what after happened with John.She fleetingly let herself feel the heartache of when she’d fallen in love with her boss at twenty-two. Nothing had ever happened, but they worked enough late nights together that it could have done, if they’d been different kinds of people. Last she’d heard, he’d ended up telling his wife that he hadn’t been happy for years, and that he’d had affairs with several co-workers – and apparently he now lived in Portsmouth as a part-time single dad who wrote a weekly Modern Masculinity column for theGuardianand ran fishing retreats for men looking to get in touch with their emotions. She hoped he was happier now. She really had been fond of him – but then, of course, so had many of the women in her old office.

Nadia started to let her mind drift into a spiral of shame-talk, berating herself for not having standards higher than Is Not Already Married, when she remembered she had spotted two men in the carriage. Two possibilities. So if it wasn’t the married man – where was the other?

There.

He’d moved across to a seat the other side of the glass partition, and was reading the paper.

That’s him!Nadia thought, staring at the top of his head.I can feel it, that’s him!

He was younger than the other guy, and his beard wasn’t expertly manicured like Married Man, but a bit more scraggly and unkempt. She could see what his mother meant by how a bit of a tidy-up would nudge him a few points higher on the Handsome Scale. He looked a bit student-y still, despite definitely being closer to thirty than twenty-one.

He wore suit trousers with New Balance trainers, and a shirt that was open at the neck, no tie. He didn’t look corporate so much as maybe designery, like he was less likely to work at a finance firm and more like he worked in media. Nadia couldn’t think which media companies were at London Bridge – weren’t most of them in Leicester Square, or Soho? Not that that mattered. She’d find out all that, if she rose to his challenge and said hi in person.

Nadia wove through the bodies in the middle of the carriage and approached where he sat, positioning herself so that she faced the glass partition, and could easily lean across and speak to him without scaring him.

‘Your mother is right,’ she settled on, bowing down so that her voice landed squarely in his ear, in a way she thought was suitably sexy and provocative. ‘You would be handsome after a shave.’

She thought she sounded flirtatious and that it was fun to allude to the self-effacing joke he’d made at his own expense. She imagined he’d look up and he’d concede that his mother was a clever woman, and then Nadia could say something about how attractive it was that he respected his family that way. Or something. She hadn’t figured out the details – all of this was new, and a tiny bit scary. She hadn’t wanted to overthink it. So that’s why she’d just said it. Said the first thing that came to her.Your mother is right.

The guy looked up. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, his brow knitted together in confusion.

Ah, shit. She had led with the wrong thing. She tried to back-pedal.

Nadia forced a giggle. ‘No, I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I meant … Your mother is obviously certifiably mad.’

The man’s eyebrows shot up now, from above his nose to below his hairline.

‘Well, maybe not certifiably mad,’ Nadia countered, feeling hot at her neck. ‘No, just, you know, she probably means well. Mothers, hey! Ha!’

---