She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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If I could go through a time machine there would be many things that I would alter.
Regret was a suffocating emotion, infiltrating each part of my mind as I pondered over every little thing I could have done differently; every mistake and missed opportunity I should have seized when I had the chance to, instead of waiting and then running out of time.
If ever given the opportunity to change my actions tonight, I would start by asking for Romeo's number earlier during our time together, instead of only just realising I had no means of communicating with him or ever seeing him again.
I would bask in the intensity of his gaze and commit every angle of his aristocratic face to memory to hold onto the remnants of his time with me. I would allow myself to fall a little earlier, instead of fighting back the inevitable feelings I was too afraid of to truly acknowledge their worth.
And last of all, as I crumpled onto the train seat and tucked my knees to my chest while I stared out of the window, seeing blurs of buildings and trees whizz past, I wouldn't get on the train.
Ultimately, I took those steps away from him: I got on the train, and did the very thing I was upset with him for - but it had been an impossible situation, a catch-22, and even though I'd needed to catch this train I wished I had just delayed my return and spent a little more time with him.
Time – that's what we needed. It felt like all we were doing was running out of time with each other; dancing between a second and forever every time we collided, only to obliterate into fragments of ourselves that the other person held beyond our grasp due to factors out of our control.
Undoubtedly this had been the longest night of my life, and the lack of sleep was evidently taking its toll on my body, but all I wanted was just a few more minutes more. All we'd needed was a few minutes more, to tell each other all the things we never got to say out loud, all the stolen glances and tentative touches that were now imprinted into our skin; all the stars glistening in my mind and the memories engraved into my subconscious that would soon fade into a rueful reminiscent of the boy whose name I still didn't know.
I shouldn't have gotten on the train.
I could feel my eyes beginning to water but I didn't have the strength to actually cry, too overwhelmed by all the loss and gain throughout the night to express how I felt. Dropping my head down onto my knees, I tucked them in tighter to my chest, closing my eyes for a second as I listened to the low rumble of the moving train, trying to grasp onto the serenity that the sound usually brought.
Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.
Being on a train was usually one of the things that brought me the closest I had thought possible to reaching happiness - but now, all I could contemplate over was how it was the thing taking me away from who I wanted to be with the most, each passing second increasing the distance between Romeo and I, as well as the fleeting time we had spent together.
