THE GIRL ON THE STOOL

Melinda waited under the bus shelter, watching the rain fall in straight silver strings. It was the kind of rain that made everything look as if it were erased and rewritten at the same time. She didn’t really care about getting wet; she just needed a minute before walking into another day where she felt like the least important person in every room.

She wasn’t lonely, exactly. She’d just gotten good at making herself small. Invisible sometimes. Easier that way. Less risk of disappointment. Less chance of being the one people forgot to include, forgot to ask, forgot to see.

A sudden splash cut through the quiet rhythm of the rain.

A guy jogged under the shelter, shaking water out of his hair like a dog. His jacket dripped everywhere. He was tall, a little awkward, and completely out of breath. Then he caught her eye and gave her a crooked smile — the kind nobody gives to a stranger unless they’re either brave or unusually kind.

“Bad day for good hair,” he said, pushing wet strands off his forehead.

It took Melinda a beat to realize he was talking to her.

Her.

Not someone behind her.

Not someone more obvious.

A laugh escaped before she could catch it. “Honestly? My hair’s never had a good day.”

He grinned. “Same. It’s like having a pet that hates me.”

She snorted — actually snorted — and immediately covered her face. He laughed with her, not at her. The rain softened around them, as if giving them space.

“Del,” he said, holding out a hand, still catching his breath.

“Melinda.”

He said her name like he actually planned to remember it. Not the polite echo people give when they’re already looking past you. Something warm flickered in her chest — the shock of being noticed.

“You always wait here?” he asked, shifting his weight, still breathless.

“Most mornings,” she said. “It’s on my way to work.”

“Then I guess this shelter just got more interesting.”

Her cheeks warmed. She wasn’t used to being a person someone wanted to talk to. She wasn’t used to spark-like moments, or feeling like anything could happen on an ordinary rainy morning.

A bus pulled up, briefly spraying cold mist through the shelter’s opening, and he stepped back automatically, positioned like he’d done this a hundred times. “You ever get tired of it?” he asked suddenly.

“The rain?”

“No. Feeling like everything’s a repeat.”

She blinked. She wasn’t expecting a real question this early in the morning. “Every day,” she said quietly. She didn’t know why she was honest, but she was.

He nodded, like he understood more than she meant to say.

When the rain thinned to a drizzle, they stepped out together. Their footsteps matched, almost too easily. He asked where she worked; she pointed to the fourth floor of the building across the street.

“Then I’ll see you around,” he said, not as a possibility — but like a fact.

She hoped he was right.

She slipped into her meeting late. Usually, she’d aim for the back corner — her invisible girl seat. The safest place not to matter. But something about Del’s easy warmth still buzzed faintly under her ribs, like a small battery she didn’t know she had.

She didn’t hide this time.

She sat in the second row.

The meeting started to blur into its usual rhythm — people talking over each other, the loudest voices winning by default. A report she’d corrected last week was being presented with her fix quietly absorbed by someone else.

Normally, she would’ve let it slide.

She had a whole lifetime of letting things slide.

Of shrinking.

Of letting people talk over her until she felt erased.

But her hand went up before she could talk herself out of it.

“I think there’s an error,” she said. She heard her own heartbeat in her ears. “The updated numbers change the outcome.”

The room shifted. People actually turned and listened.

Her supervisor blinked, surprised, then nodded. “Walk us through it.”

She did — calmly, clearly, even though her palms were sweating. When she finished, someone murmured, “Good catch.” Someone else held the door open for her on the way out. Tiny things. But tiny things add up when you’re used to zero.

She almost texted someone to tell them she’d spoken up.

But who would she tell?

And why give the moment away?

It felt like something was beginning.

She wondered if Del would’ve smiled hearing about it.

Probably.

He seemed like the type who believed in small wins, even for strangers.

She caught herself thinking about the shelter — the way he’d made space next to her like she belonged there.

That wasn’t nothing.

She heard the news on her way out of the building.

A cyclist.

Hit by a delivery van.

Early morning.

Sudden.

A few people stood near the elevators whispering a name.

Del.

The world didn’t crash. It rearranged itself — like furniture being moved when you weren’t looking. Something inside her felt… different. Not broken, not even shattered. Just shifted. Quietly, heavily.

She had known him for minutes.

But maybe that was enough for a beginning.

And enough for an ending too.

She stepped outside. The rain had stopped, but the pavement still shone like it was holding onto the memory of it. She stood there until the air steadied around her.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t crumble.

She just felt the truth of it — that someone she barely knew had nudged her life in a direction she hadn’t expected.

Maybe some people don’t stay long.

Maybe they don’t need to.

Maybe the point isn’t how long they were there, but how quickly they shifted the ground beneath you.

She walked to the crosswalk and pressed the button with more certainty than she’d had yesterday. The light changed, and she crossed without hesitating.

The next morning, she arrived at work early. She didn’t think about the corner seat anymore. She sat at the table. She opened her notebook. She answered questions without apologizing first.

People noticed.

Not dramatically—

but enough.

Later, during lunch, she sat by the window looking out over the street where the rain had fallen the day before. She wondered if anyone else had known Del the way she had — which was to say, barely at all, and yet still enough to feel changed.

Maybe her life didn’t need a grand beginning.

Maybe a spark was enough.

Maybe a moment was enough.

She didn’t know why his smile had felt like the start of something she didn’t get to keep.

But she did know something had shifted inside her — something that wasn’t going back.

Her relationship with Del had lasted minutes.

Her relationship with herself — the version of herself she was becoming — might last much longer.

And that was enough.

More than enough, actually.