#writing

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.

The subway car was half-empty at 2 AM, which meant the man in the gray coat had plenty of seats to choose from. He chose the one directly across from me. I'd been writing in my notebook—a scene where a character discovers their reflection has started moving independently—when I felt his stare. Not the quick, dismissive glance city dwellers exchange. The kind that settles in and stays.

I kept writing, scratching out a line that felt too obvious. The character would notice the discrepancy slowly, I decided, not all at once. A hand moving a fraction of a second too late. A blink that doesn't quite sync. The man across from me shifted, and when I glanced up, he was reading a book with its cover turned inward against his palm. Hiding it, or just holding it that way? I couldn't tell.

"Do you believe in doubles?" he asked, not looking up from his concealed pages.

I watched the rain trace horizontal lines across the café window, each droplet defying gravity's downward pull. The physics didn't matter as much as the pattern—diagonal streaks like brush strokes on glass, each one lasting seconds before dissolving into the next. I'd come here to write a story about a woman who could see music, but instead I found myself studying water's trajectory in wind.

The barista brought my second americano without asking, the cup settling onto the marble table with a soft

clink