You were on my train last night

You were on my train last night.

I didn't see you at first. You never took the metro, not once in seven years, so I had no reason to expect it, and anyway it was a crowded carriage. I had my nose in my dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights. It was the one you bought for me that day in September, a moment so set in my heart that I could nearly recite it from memory.

You seem sad.

I am sad, I think.

Do you know why?

Do I ever?

We shared a pained smile and you kissed the top of my head like you had a thousand times before. Then, before I knew what was happening, you took me by the hand and spun me into a waltz. It was a crowded street in Soho, but the sea of people parted for us. Your feet followed a rhythm only they understood – when you said you were a terrible dancer, you weren't lying – but somehow we made it work.

By the end I was laughing in spite of myself, a stupid grin cracking my face into something beautiful. You giggled with me like we were kids sharing a secret. We were.

Afterwards you noticed a little shop, tucked away down a side alley: Wilson's Old and Rare Books. You all but carried me there, where we sat between the dust-sprinkled shelves and you picked out–

I snapped back to reality then, dragged out of my daydream by the unholy screech of brakes. The train lurched as it left the tube station. I counted down the stops from Holloway Road to Knightsbridge and thought about what I'd have for dinner.

I caught a scent on the stale air: clove, vetiver and vanilla, overlaid with cigarette smoke.

You always said you'd quit one day. You also said we'd live in a cottage with a thatched roof and a garden big enough for my sunflowers.

You said a lot of things.

I knew it was you. The smell of your cologne was so unmistakeable, perhaps because it used to seep into my hair when I fell asleep in your arms, that it couldn't be anyone else. But I tried to tell myself I was imagining things.

Then you laughed at something. It was one small sound in the omnipresent hum of the Piccadilly line, barely there at all beneath too-loud drunken conversations and the nattering of old ladies and one guy who was watching car crash videos on his phone at full volume, but it was there. And it shattered me into a thousand tiny pieces.

Your laugh was my favourite sound. It didn't seem possible that something I loved could hurt me so much, but here I was anyway, hurting all the same.

I clutched Wuthering Heights, running my white-knuckled thumb over the spine like I once held a rosary in Sunday school. The teachers could never convince me that seeing wasn't believing, so I closed my eyes like it might make you disappear.

When I opened them again, you were there, standing close enough that I could've reached out and touched you. There must have been thirty other sorry souls squished into the carriage, but in a second they faded into nothingness. You and I were the only people there.

Suddenly we weren't on the train anymore and soft sunlight was filtering through the bookshop windows and I was happy. You handed me a second-edition of Wuthering Heights from 1850.

You remind me of Catherine you said

A bitch?

And you smiled in the way that made your eyes crinkle in the corners and shook your head and whispered alive

I looked up at you now and saw two people: one, the boy I knew and wanted to spend forever with, the other a stranger. Still, you hadn't changed at all. Your hair still fell into your eyes; time had not faded the scar on your cheek. Seeing your face was like walking into your childhood bedroom and finding everything exactly how you left it – and knowing you couldn't stay.

You didn't say anything. You didn’t need to, really. Speaking would have ruined it. What words could mean as much as the things we left unsaid? Silence seemed the only appropriate response.

There was a little flicker of something in your deep brown eyes when they met mine, not quite a spark but perhaps a stirring of the embers. Did you feel it, the ache, the hole in your chest from when we were a we? Did you feel it too?

You glanced at the book in my hands; I willed them to stay still. Your mouth twitched up at the corners and you raised an eyebrow as if to say,

Not bored of it yet?

I echoed your ghost of a smile and shook my head.

Not in the slightest.

You sneezed, and I couldn't help but snicker under my breath. The metro made you sneeze, every single time without fail. That was why you hated it.

My almost-laugh didn't go unnoticed, even though I covered it with a cough. I stifled another, much larger laugh at the sulky expression painted across your face. A pack of tissues floated somewhere in the black hole of my handbag; after a brief search, I held one out as a peace offering.

You took it from me, out of politeness rather than necessity. As you did, your fingers brushed against mine. My heart fluttered like a trapped dove against my ribcage, drumming a desperate let-me-out beat.

That afternoon in Soho, you bought me my favourite book. When you took out a pen as though to write something on the 200-year-old title page, I made a strangled sound of abject horror. You grinned and placatingly took a scrap of paper out of your pocket, scrawling something you wouldn't let me see and slipping it into the book.

We walked back to my house. As we were saying goodbye, just-five-more-minutes-ing the hours away, it started to rain. Of course, I invited you inside. We watched raindrops racing down the windowpane, betting on our favourites like it was the Grand National.

Once the bad weather cleared, we said our goodbyes all over again. You were halfway to the bus station when I opened my new copy of Wuthering Heights and saw your inscription: I love you.

I burst out the door and sprinted after you, one raindrop racing towards the other. I got there in time, just as the bus was trundling around the corner.

You weren't supposed to read it yet.

I love you too.

With a judder, the train pulled to a nails-on-a-chalkboard halt. This is Leicester Square said the disembodied voice. Change here for the Northern line.

"This is your stop," I croaked, surprised my voice was working at all.

"I know," you replied softly. "But I don't think I'm ready to get off this train. Are you?"

"No."

You sat down next to me, our knees not quite touching. You cleared your throat nervously.

"So," you said at last, "how have you been?"