Page 2 of Our Stop

She sat and waited for her friend’s reply. It was hot on the train, even this early, and a tiny bead of sweat had formed at the nape of her neck. She could smell BO, and instantly worried it was coming from her.

Nadia tried to surreptitiously turn her head and pretend-cough, bringing her shoulder up to her mouth and her nostrils closer to her armpits. She smelled of antiperspirant. She’d read about the link between deodorant and breast cancer and tried using a crystal as a natural alternative for three weeks a few summers ago, but Emma had pulled her aside and told her in no uncertain terms that it was ineffective. Today, she was 100 per cent aluminium – and sweat-free – in cucumber and green tea Dove.

Relieved, she looked around for the culprit, clocking a group of tourists arguing over a map, a nanny with three blonde children, and a cute man reading a paper by the doors who didn’t look unlike the model in the new John Lewis adverts. Her gaze finally landed on the damp patches under the armpits of the guy stood right in front of her, his crotch almost in her eye. Gross. The morning commute was like being on Noah’s Ark – wild animals cooped up, unnaturally close, a smorgasbord of odours akin to Saturday afternoon in Sports Direct.

She waited for her stop, staring idly around the carriage, trying not to inhale. She glanced lazily back at the man by the doors – the one with the newspaper.Just my type, she couldn’t help but think, enjoying the way his tailored trousers danced close enough to his thighs to make her cheeks blush. Her phone buzzed. She pulled her gaze away to look at Emma’s text, and forgot about him.

2

Daniel

Daniel Weissman couldn’t believe it. As they’d pulled up at Angel she’d skidded around the corner and he’d held his breath as he’d held the door, like a Taylor Swift lyric about an innocuous beginning and a happy ending and love that was always meant to be. Not that Daniel meant to sound soft that way. He just got weird and jittery and soppy when he thought about her. She had that effect on him. Daniel found it hard not to let his imagination get carried away.

He tried to catch sight of her from his position by the doors – she’d snaked around to the middle of the carriage. He could just about make out the top of her head. She always had hair that was messy, but not like she didn’t care about herself. It was messy like she’d just come from a big adventure, or the beach. It probably had a name, but Daniel didn’t know it. He just knew that she was very much his type. It was so embarrassing, but in the sponsorship advert in between every ad break forThe Lust Villa, there was a girl who looked just like her, and if Daniel hadn’t seen her in a while even that – a bloody advert! – could make him nostalgic and thoughtful. It was shameful, really.

The Lust Villawas Daniel’s summer reality TV fix, full of romance and seduction and laughing. Daniel acted like it bugged him that the TV had to be on at 9 p.m. every evening for the show, but he was always in the living room at 8.58 p.m., as if by accident, just settling down to his cup of tea in the big armchair with the best view of the widescreen. His flatmate Lorenzo pretended that he didn’t notice the coincidence, and they happily watched it together every night. Neither said it out loud – and nobody would guess it from Lorenzo’s behaviour – but they were both looking for somebody to settle down with and it was quite informative watching what women liked and didn’t like via a daily show that featured genuine relationships. Daniel used it as a way to get his confidence up, taking notes and learning lessons; last night, the bloke that was obviously there as a bit of an underdog had finally found his match, and now here Daniel was in this moment, today. He didn’t want to be the underdog in his own life. That show made him feel like he owed it to himself to at least try with this woman. Just to see.

Daniel couldn’t help but admire the serendipity of the morning. What were the chances she’d stagger right past him on the morning the advert got published? They’d only been on the same train at the same time on a handful of occasions, including today. He forced himself to breathe deeply. He’d done it – sent off theMissed Connection –to maybe, hopefully, finally get her attention, but he was suddenly terrified she’d know it was him. What if she laughed in his face and called him a loser? A dreamer? What if she told everyone at work – her work, or his work – how he was pathetic, and had dared to think he was good enough for her? Maybe she’d go viral on Twitter, or post his picture on her Instagram. On the one hand, he knew she was too nice to ever be so awful, but on the other, the tiniest voice in the back of his mind told him that’s exactly what would happen. He shook his head to try and rid himself of the thought. Love was sending him crazy. Or was it that he was crazy in love?

‘Mate, this isn’t love,’ Lorenzo had told him, not even taking his eyes off the telly to issue his damning verdict. ‘You just wanna bang her.’

Daniel did not just want to ‘bang her’. That wasn’t it at all. He probably shouldn’t stare at her silently and from afar, though. That was a bit weird. It was just – well … The politics of hitting on a woman seemingly out of the blue were so blurred and loaded. He could hardly approach her cold, like some train psychopath she’d have to shake by ‘pretending’ they were at her stop and then slipping out and onto a different carriage. But he also knew that if any blokes in his life told him they were trying to seduce a woman they’d never directly spoken to by putting an advert in the paper and then staring at her stealthily somewhere beyond Moorgate, he’d gently suggest that it probably wasn’t the most ethically sound plan. He wastryingto be romantic, whilst also saving face. He hoped he’d got the balance right.

In his head, the fantasy went like this: she’d read the paper and see his note and look up immediately and he’d be right there, by the doors, like he said, and they’d make eye contact and she’d smile coyly and he’d go, simply, ‘Hello’. It would be the beginning of the rest of their lives, that ‘Hello’. Like in a movie. And in that movie there wouldn’t be five Spanish tourists in between them, crowded around in a circle, looking at a map, an indistinguishable babble punctuated occasionally by the mispronunciation of ‘Leicester Square’. Fuck. Where was she? Oh god, this was awful.

The train pulled into London Bridge and, after finally locating her as she steamed ahead through the crowds and towards the exit, the moment he thought might happen disappeared before his eyes. There was no bolt of lightning. No world slowing as their eyes met, not so much as a question but as an answer. She had barely acknowledged him when he held the doors and helped her get on the train – she’d been in a rush, and distracted, and her ‘thank you’ was more of a breathy ‘ta!’ as she passed by. As he tried to keep pace with her, Daniel realized he was disappointed in himself, and in the situation. He’d imagined this for weeks, and now … nothing.

She suddenly stopped in the middle of the departing commuters to read her phone, but it wasn’t like he could slow down as well, let alone stand beside her, could he? So he kept walking and then waited by the exit. He wasn’t sure what for. Just to see her, probably. To see her on the day he’d put himself out there, to remind himself it was real, that she was real, even if it hadn’t gone to plan.

Later, when Daniel told Lorenzo how the morning had played out, he’d miss out this part – the part where he waited for her. What was he doing? He wasn’t going to actually go up and talk to her. Again, she had a right to exist without him bothering her. He shook his head.Come on mate, get a grip, he told himself.He headed towards his office, his heart beating loudly and rapidly and disruptively in his chest.

He’d screwed it up.

He was gutted.

She hadn’t seen it.

What a wasted gesture.

You bloody idiot, he muttered to himself, unaware that seeing the advert was exactly what was holding Nadia up back on the platform.

3

Nadia

Nads, not being funny but don’t you think this sounds like it could be you?!

Nadia tapped on the photo Emma had sent through and waited for it to download, simultaneously bumping through the commuters heaving in the opposite direction to her.

The photo was a close-up of that morning’s paper, specifically theMissed Connectionssection – the bit where Londoners wrote in about their commute crush and left hints about their identity in the hopes of landing a date with a stranger they’d seen on the bus or tube. Nadia and Emma were obsessed withMissed Connections.It was a mix of horror and awe – the same kind of compulsion that drove their love of reality TV.

The mating rituals of the sexes were a constant source of fascination for them both. Before she got the restaurant review column – a superb job for any best friend to have, since Nadia was frequently her plus-one – Emma used to be the dating columnist at one of the weekly women’s mags, but most of her material was crowd-sourced from after-work drinks with Nadia and sometimes Nadia’s work best friend, Gaby.

Romance and lust and sex and relationships were of endless interest for them all, and ever since they’d known each other, bad dates were almost worth it in order to have an outrageous story to share the next day. They’d had four-fingers-in-his-bum guy, and the divorced chap who’d disclosed on their first date that his wife had left him because he ‘couldn’t satisfy her – you know, sexually’. There’d been ‘Actually-I’m-in-an-open-marriage-my-wife-just-doesn’t-know-it’ man, and also the one who picked at the eczema behind his ear and proceeded to eat it in between mouthfuls of his pint.

Emma once accidentally had three dates with a man Gaby had previously dated – Gaby had dumped him because he refused to wear a condom, and Emma found that out only after she’d dumped him for … refusing to wear a condom. For some reason all three of them had dated more than a handful of men called James, who ended up being referred to by number: James One, James Six, James Nine. The most memorable bloke was Period Pete, a friend of a friend who liked performing oral sex on menstruating women, and who the three collectively decided must have an undiagnosed iron deficiency.

Nadia, Gaby and Emma had talked about them all, trying to understand the puzzle of men-kind. Well, except for the one who said he’d be too busy to have a girlfriend ‘for the next five years, at least’, who Nadia had simply never texted back again. He was a riddle not worth trying to solve. She didn’t want a man she had to teach kindness to.

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