Page 3 of Somewhere Along The Line
I fix my attention on how far I’ve come—on all I’ve accomplished since I walked out of the Fundament building and never looked back. The way I made it through that first year living at home given my sudden lack of income in this ridiculously expensive city. How I filled my days helping Mom prep projects for her first-grade classroom and dreaming about a future that felt like my own—not the product of everyone else’s expectations.
It wasn’t all bad, I tell myself now, choosing to ignore the itch that starts on my skin when I think about the twin bed that sheltered me at age eight and again, unwittingly, at twenty-six.
Then there’s Sami, the absolute best college roommate-turned friend-turned adult roommate-turned-wannabe life coach. Sami, who has never once made me feel like I’m anything other than perfection wrapped in sunkissed skin and a graphic tee. It’s hard to believe she can fit so much support and encouragement into her tiny, five-foot-nothing frame.
Sometimes I think her magic is hidden beneath her mass of shiny black curls.
When I got the job offer from Hope First six months ago (after interviewing at no fewer than eighteen non-profits), we spent the night at our new place watchingTitanicand drinking champagne, stopping only to discuss how Leonardo DiCaprio went from being the hottest man on Earth to a serial age-gap dater with a surprisingly round face.
It was the start of a new chapter, one I was eager to fill with all sorts of goodness I had been missing, desperately, for far too long.
And now things are looking up. I’ve spent the past two years building a mosaic out of my life, placing one broken shard into the picture at a time, and it’s finally starting to make sense… if you stand far away and squint a little. I tally the pieces I’ve added lately:
A great new job, even if it does pay fifty percent less than I used to comfortably make at Fundament.
The ability to help people, moms and their kids, who need support as they navigate life without a partner.
The cutest coach house apartment with Sami that is slowly coming together, filled with flea market finds in every color imaginable and our very own stackable washer and dryer.
Enough money to buy the groceries I want to buy most weeks.
Painting, even though it’s just with the kids at work on Thursday afternoons. Our weekly painting class lights up a part of myself previously buried under mounds of numbers and paperwork. It’s helping me breathe again.
“Your stop?”
That voice, the never-forgets-a-birthday, always-returns-his-voicemails, custom-tailors-his-clothes voice pops my brain bubble for the second time this morning. I blink up at him towering over me, his blue eyes reflecting bits of silver from the pole he’s grasping as he stands.
“You always step off here. Didn’t want you to miss it.”
He shifts his bag up his shoulder and clears his throat as he steps past me to join the mass of people waiting for the doors.
I’m frozen for a second, maybe ten, as my brain orients itself away from its replay of the last two years and to the reality that Iamabout to miss my stop.
I jump up with a start, my canvas bag full of notebooks and a sausage ball breakfast, nearly whacking the sweet old lady sitting beside me. “So sorry!” The words are an exhale as I catch my balance, the train slowing with a jolt.
Missing this stop would mean being late for work. With a possible promotion hanging on my performance at the upcoming gala, I’m in no position to slack off. My bank account nods in agreement.
The realization hits me as I move toward the train’s doors. It takes out my senses for a second, the feeling that happens when you stand up too fast and everything blurs. I regain my focus on the back of the man’s perfectly styled head, the head that floats tall above several people standing between us.
Banker Man knows my stop.
Of course, I’ve been studying him these past few weeks, wondering if he’ll continue to ride in the third car of the 7:26 a.m. B Line train. This car filled with comers and goers I don’t recognize, the man’s presence a point of comforting consistency in my otherwise unpredictable days.
So far, he has. Every day he’s here.
Maybe he’s been watching me too?
I let the question swirl in my mind. The thought sends a tingle straight down my spine, sprouting goosebumps on my arms.
The doors open, and I want to say something to him, to tell him thanks for prompting me about the stop. But by the time I’m off the train, he’s halfway down the platform steps, walking toward whatever Important Banker Building he’ll spend his next eight (Twelve? Sixteen?) hours within.
A small ache stirs in my chest as I turn the opposite way toward my building, and I try to smother it. The goal is to feel nothing for this man. Yet, in these past two minutes alone I’ve felt gratitude, then hope, and now disappointment.
Smother, smother, smother.
Tomorrow, I’ll keep my thoughts in line. Odds are we’ll both be on this train again tomorrow.
The wooden platform groansunder my feet as I speed walk away from the station and into the city, a place that offers blissful anonymity if you bob and weave with the mass of humanity lining the streets.
