James started catching the 8:07 train ten minutes earlier than he needed to.

Ivy didn’t say much at first. Sometimes she’d nod. Sometimes she’d offer him a half-smile before putting her headphones back on. But she didn’t move when he sat across from her. That was something.

Then came the Tuesday she offered him a Lifesaver from the tin in her coat pocket. He picked the red one. She told him red was overrated. He asked why she carried candy like someone’s grandmother.

She laughed. Really laughed. That was the first time he saw her dimples.

It became a rhythm. Ivy would draw or write in that journal, James would try to guess what she was scribbling, and she’d shake her head no every single time.

“Are you ever going to show me what’s in there?” he asked one morning.

“Maybe,” she said. “If I trust you.”

He was quiet for a second. “And do you?”

Ivy closed the journal, resting her hand on the cover like it held something alive.

“Not yet.”

She always got off three stops before him. That day, she stood up to leave and turned to him like she’d remembered something.

“I didn’t miss the train last week,” she said. “I was in the hospital.”

James blinked. “Are you okay?”

Ivy hesitated. “Getting there.”

Then she was gone again, her hair vanishing into the blur of bodies and cold concrete.

James sat there, still tasting cherry on his tongue, wondering how someone could feel so close and so far all at once.

But the next morning, she was there.

Again.