You cannot be expected to hold a wallet and a cup of coffee in one hand, while the other fiddles to push your Metrocard back into your wallet. You cannot be blamed for the coffee that splashes on your shirt, and the trickle of beads, slowly soaking in. It is a dark shirt anyway. But when you look up and see an ex-girlfriend, with a glance on her face that tells you she saw the whole thing, then you have the right to feel red in the face. You swipe the beads with your hand. Push them deep into the fabric.
“Hello,” you say. You immediately remember why she left in the first place, and how you returned home from work one day to hear her moaning in the bedroom. And that fucker on top of her.
“Let me help you,” she says, and offers to take the coffee from you, or the bag slung over your shoulder.
You decline and jump back at her advance. You tighten a grip on your bag and stand and watch the train pull into the station, rumbling your shoes, and headlights curve around the rusty old pillars before the train arrives, the breaks squealing.
“This is my train,” she says.
You almost ask her where she is going; where she is living now; if she still leaves her towels on the bedroom floor; and the dog?
“Well, bye.”
You smile and raise your coffee in a dumb toast-salute. She flicks her hair behind her, and the wind of all of that hair tips you off balance. You catch yourself. How that long black coat of hers cannot cover up the walk she has. The way of her hips. The way of her calves. You sigh, and try to remember how often you hated her, but nothing comes to you.