I always hated waiting at train stations. Too cold in the winter, too crowded in the summer, too easy to feel like everyone around you is going somewhere better than you are. But that night, waiting under the flickering departure board, I didn’t mind it half as much — because he was there too.
I’d met Ben three weeks earlier at the café near campus. He was the kind of guy you didn’t notice right away — quiet, polite, a little shy behind his glasses. He’d asked to borrow my charger once. Then my pen. Then, eventually, my time.
We’d met up for coffee, for lunch, for late-night study sessions that turned into early-morning walks home. Nothing had happened — not really — but there was a hum in the air every time he sat close enough for our shoulders to touch. A tiny spark I kept pretending not to feel.
So when my train got delayed that night, and he offered to wait with me, I didn’t tell him he didn’t have to. I just scooted closer on the hard plastic bench and let our knees brush in the quiet buzz of the empty platform.
“It’s going to be another hour,” he said, checking his phone.
“That’s fine,” I said. I didn’t mean it about the train.
We talked about nothing — finals, books we kept saying we’d lend each other, the way the station smelled like old coffee and rain. He laughed when I shivered and draped his jacket over my shoulders without asking. It smelled like him — warm, clean, a little like soap and winter air.
When he brushed a loose strand of hair from my face, I stopped breathing. He didn’t pull away. Just looked at me, really looked, like he’d been waiting for permission.
And maybe I’d been waiting too long to give it.
So I leaned in first. Pressed my lips to his before I could overthink it. It was gentle at first — a question, a test. His hand cupped my cheek, thumb brushing my skin like he was trying to memorize it. When I parted my lips, he sighed into my mouth like he’d been holding that breath for weeks.
I felt his heartbeat through his coat, fast and nervous and real. He tasted like the tea he always ordered instead of coffee, sweet and warm on my tongue.
When we pulled back, I laughed. Couldn’t help it. He did too, forehead resting against mine, breath fogging up the cold air between us.
“I’ve wanted to do that since you lent me that stupid charger,” he whispered.
“Should’ve asked sooner.”
He kissed me again — deeper this time, enough to make my toes curl inside my boots. I didn’t care who saw. Didn’t care that the old man behind the ticket counter was probably rolling his eyes at us. For once, I was glad the train was late.
When the announcement finally came — last call, final boarding — he helped me with my bag like he always did, hand brushing mine like we hadn’t just kissed like we were the only two people awake in the world.
At the train door, he leaned in again. A soft goodbye. No rush. No promise except the one I could read in his smile.
“Call me when you get home?”
“Only if you promise to answer.”
“I always will.”
And then I was gone — stepping onto the train with his jacket still around my shoulders, my mouth still warm from his kiss, the station lights fading behind me as the city rolled away.
I didn’t hate waiting at train stations anymore.
