The bus shelter smelled like wet cardboard and someone's spilled energy drink. I'd been waiting eleven minutes—not ten, not fifteen—because I kept checking my phone, as if the number 42 would materialize faster if I refreshed the transit app one more time. A woman beside me was reading a paperback with a creased spine, the kind of damage that comes from being loved too hard. I caught a glimpse of the title: The Hands We Hold. She turned a page without looking up, and I wondered what scene she was living in while I was stuck in mine.
There was a moment—brief, almost missable—when our eyes met. She smiled, or maybe just softened her mouth in that way people do when they're acknowledging another human without committing to conversation. I smiled back, or tried to. Then she returned to her book, and I returned to my phone, and the moment collapsed into the past tense.
I've been thinking about moments like that. The ones that don't mean anything but feel like they should. The ones where nothing happens, but you're aware of the nothing happening. I read somewhere that most of life is waiting—for buses, for results, for someone to text back, for the feeling that you're doing it right. And in the waiting, we convince ourselves that the thing we're waiting for will be the thing that matters.