Next Stop, You

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She wasn't on the train again.

But this time, I didn't flinch.

No panic. No sprinting across platforms. No overthinking, followed by several underwhelming texts she'd ignore anyway.

Just me.

Just the window seat.

And a pair of earbuds that felt colder than usual.

---

The train lurched forward.

I hit shuffle on our playlist.

"Next Stop," Version 4.1.

She renamed it two weeks ago, then added seventeen songs and deleted three of mine. All without asking.

It was both annoying and perfectly in character.

---

Track One:

Soft vocals, a whispered guitar line.

The singer murmured something about looking for someone in places they used to be.

Very subtle.

The kind of lyrics you don't really listen to until they punch you in the throat.

---

I stared out the window.

Same concrete blur.

Same station signs.

Same guy who always falls asleep with his mouth open two rows across.

But suddenly, the whole ride felt like it belonged to someone else.

Like I was sitting inside a memory I hadn't earned yet.

---

Track Two.

It was one of her picks.

Title: "Crushed Tulips & Coffee Mornings"

God, her taste in names was so aggressively indie.

I made fun of it when she first added it.

> "What are tulips even doing in this metaphor?"

She shrugged.

> "They're crushed. Like Mondays. Like hearts. Like you when I beat you in song roulette."

---

But now, listening to it?

Now it sounded different.

Now I heard the lines she used to hum, the ones she always turned the volume up for:

> "I'm not the kind of girl you wait for...

But I wait anyway."

And I remembered how she looked away every time it played.

How her fingers always fidgeted.

How she never made eye contact during that chorus.

---

It wasn't just a song.

It was a message.

A confession wrapped in chords.

She was talking to me the whole time.

And I was too busy being emotionally constipated to notice.

---

Track Three.

My pick.

One of the few she never roasted.

I once said it reminded me of rainy mornings.

Of things unsaid.

Of... her.

She didn't laugh at that.

Just changed the track name later to:

> "He Doesn't Know I Know."

Which made no sense at the time.

Now it did.

Now it made too much sense.

---

I paused the playlist halfway through Track Four.

Took out the notebook I'd started sketching in.

The one with all the stupid doodles of vending machines, stray cats, and her face.

I flipped past the old drawings.

The one where she's scowling.

The one where she's teasing me, mouth half-open mid-insult.

The one where she's napping on the train window with her hair all over the place like she'd fought gravity and lost.

---

Then I started a new one.

This time, I drew her smiling.

Not the grin she used when mocking my jazz playlists.

Not the smirk she wore when she crushed me in "Guess That Track."

But the small, real one.

The smile she gave when she thought I wasn't looking.

---

I took my time.

Focused on her eyes — the way they softened when she stared out at the passing river.

The barely-noticeable dimple on one cheek.

The messy hair that never stayed tucked behind her ear, no matter how many times she tried.

I drew her the way I saw her.

Not the way the world did.

---

Halfway through the sketch, the train made its usual stop under the overpass.

There was a brief flash of sunlight through the dirty window.

And I realized:

She didn't just share music with me.

She gave me pieces of herself in every track.

The late-night playlist she never explained.

The instrumental she refused to skip.

The sad song she always said was "just pretty."

---

Every hum.

Every tap of her fingers on the seat rail.

Every time she looked away instead of laughing.

They all meant something.

And I missed it.

---

She was always talking to me.

And I was listening with the volume too low.

---

The sketch was almost done when the train neared my stop.

I looked at it one more time.

It wasn't perfect.

The shading was uneven. The jawline slightly off.

But it felt real.

Like her.

---

I tucked the sketch carefully into my notebook.

Closed the cover.

And pressed play again.

---

The song that came next?

Hers.

She once called it her "safety track."

Said it helped her not feel invisible.

I listened to it with both earbuds in this time.

And as the train doors opened,

I whispered—

> "I see you."

Even if she couldn't hear it.

Yet.

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