Part 3: The Last Seat on the 6:15.

Nora spent longer than she'd like to admit deciding what to wear to "just coffee," settling eventually on the outfit she'd have picked anyway if she were being honest with herself about how much this mattered.

Sam was already at a corner table when she arrived, the same paperback sitting beside his cup, more visibly nervous than he'd been on the train — no headphones to hide behind this time, no excuse to look anywhere but directly at her.

"You brought the book," Nora said, sliding into the seat across from him.

"I wanted to show you the page. Two hundred and three. The one that got me." He slid it across the table, and Nora read the passage carefully, feeling the specific ache of watching someone hand you something they'd normally keep private.

"That's devastating," she said softly, looking up. "You weren't kidding about needing something in your eye."

"I don't usually talk about books like this," Sam admitted, taking it back, careful with the worn spine. "Or much else, honestly. I'm not typically the guy who gives his number to strangers on trains."

"What made yesterday different?"

Sam considered the question seriously, turning his coffee cup slowly. "I think I've spent the last two years being careful. After a relationship that ended badly, I told myself I'd rather be cautious than get hurt again. And then you sat down, uninvited, completely unbothered by the fact that I clearly wanted to be left alone, and something about that felt like exactly the kind of interruption I didn't know I needed."

"I have a talent for uninvited interruptions," Nora said. "It's served me well and poorly in roughly equal measure."

"I'm hoping this lands in the 'well' category."

"Me too." Nora wrapped her hands around her own cup, feeling more honest than she usually allowed herself this early with someone. "Can I tell you something? I've been single for a while too not because anything went badly, just because nothing ever felt worth the risk. I got good at convincing myself that was fine. That I didn't need the extra complication."

"And now?"

"Now I ran to catch a train, sat in the one open seat next to a stranger who clearly wanted his own space, and somehow that felt like the first genuinely worthwhile risk I've taken in years." She looked up at him. "That probably sounds dramatic for a forty-minute train ride."

"It doesn't," Sam said quietly. "I think I felt the same thing, and I've had considerably more practice than you at not admitting things like that."

They stayed at the small table long after their coffees went cold, the conversation moving easily between books and family and the particular loneliness of being cautious for too long, until the cafe started closing up around them and neither one seemed to notice the staff sweeping near their table.

"I don't want this to be a nice, isolated thing that happened once," Nora said finally, gathering her courage the same way she'd gathered it running for the train. "I want to see where this goes. Properly. If you're willing."

Sam reached across the table, careful, deliberate, and took her hand. "I've been willing since you asked if the seat was taken and sat down before I could answer."

Nora laughed, something warm and certain settling into her chest. "I really do have a talent for uninvited interruptions."

"Best one I've had in years," Sam said, smiling. "Don't stop."

to be continued... ☕💛