“This whole route is pretty patchy,” Duncan says. “We’re in a dead zone now.”
“You make it sound like the start of a horror movie.”
He laughs at this. “I can never watch those things.”
“Me neither.” She looks again at the stars out the window. “What happens if we’re stuck here for a while?”
“Then we’re stuck here for a while. Me and this guy in the dining car, Raymond, we always make bets on delays. The over-under on this one is six hours.”
“Are you over or under?”
“Over,” he says. “We’re already an hour in, and it doesn’t seem like we’re going anywhere soon.”
“Hey, Duncan, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What’s your biggest dream?” She doesn’t have her camera with her, but she finds she wants to know anyway.
He doesn’t hesitate, not even for a second. It’s as if he gets asked this question every single day. “A cabin on a lake. Maybe up in Wisconsin. I’d go ice fishing in the winters and take a boat out in the summers. Maybe get a dog to sit with me on the porch. No work. No schedules. No passengers.” He cracks a grin. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Just those stars,” he says, jabbing a thumb at the window. “But without the glass.”
Mae nods. “That sounds nice.”
“Sure does.”
She doesn’t ask his word for love. He’s still looking up at the stars with a thoughtful expression, and that feels to Mae like answer enough.
“Good night, Duncan,” she says with a smile, and he gives her a little wave.
“Good night, Margaret Campbell, room twenty-four.”
Mae flinches at this, the reminder that’s trailed her halfway across the country. She’s not Hugo’s girlfriend. She doesn’t know what she is, but it’s not that.
Just enjoy it,Priyanka said, which has never been a problem for Mae. In fact, it’s what these types of things have always been: fun and breezy and uncomplicated. There’s no reason why this should be any different.
It’s not that she doesn’t believe in love. But seeing other people’s stories unfold always feels like watching a movie she would never have picked out for herself. Somewhere there must be a version that’s more like the films in her head, bright and colorful and unique.
“You’re a tough nut to crack,” Nana once told her, and Priyanka’s warning that she’s too careful with her heart is still ringing in her ears.
But they’re both wrong. Her heart isn’t the problem.
It’s that she’s never met someone she actually hopes will break through.
When she reaches the door to their compartment, she pauses for a moment. Beneath her feet, there’s a faint vibration, almost like the purring of cat, but nothing else. After a few seconds, it disappears again, and they’re no longer even idling. They’re just stuck.
Trains are meant to be in motion. People too. They should be on their way somewhere, slicing through the dark rather than huddling here beneath it.
She slides open the door. Hugo is still asleep, his face mashed into the pillow, his arm hanging over the edge of the bunk. She steps up to the bed and studies him for a second, then—unable to resist—stands on her tiptoes and kisses him on the nose.
His eyelids flutter, and when they open, he looks sleepy and unfocused.
“Hugo?” she whispers.
“Yeah?”
