Last Train Home

One

•❅──✧❅✦❅✧──❅•

Trains remind me of angels. Precisely, fallen angels. They're a necessary evil; they take people from one place to another; they light up in the dark and have halos when trying to get somewhere or escape something. As I settle down in the deep green seat of the last train out of Southampton, headed to Cardiff, Wales, I sigh. The dark outside as the train pulls out of the station makes me smile when it should make me frown.

The white snow is like pixie dust, taunting me. The only time I've seen snow in Southampton for at least five years, and it starts on the day I'm running.

The lights of the marina and the whizz of city life all begin fizzing away like a bath bomb as it rattles through the outer-city train stations. I suppose the beauty of being on a train at ten-forty-five at night is that it's quiet. I see one guy on the other side of the aisle, staring out the window, but that's it. Just two of us in the grey and bottle-green carriage.

Home. They say home is where the heart is. For the longest time, I thought my home belonged back there, with him and my family down in the big maritime city. But it turns out it didn't. My heart was stolen, stabbed, and thrown to the wolves, humiliated and ridiculed. My home is back in Wales, where I never should've left.

I should've kept my suitcase with me, but I put it in the front of the carriage with what I assume is the other guy's two small black matte cases. I figure he must've come from the airport with the white and green tags around the holdall part.

The music dances into my ears from my earphones, filling my mind with many years of memories as my temple rests on the freezing window. We plunge into the darkness of the short countryside between the city and the next stop.

Years of loving Bruno on the sly, thinking one day he would wake up and see what we had was meant to be and all that bull crap, until he took a job in the army and left everyone broken-hearted. When he called me a week ago to say he was home for Christmas and I should come home, I was overjoyed. He wanted to talk to me, hyped me up with flirty messages like he used to.

And then when I do come running like a lapdog, thinking if we would finally move from friends to something more, he admits he's actually getting married to a girl from his regiment, in a month. After what happened the day before we met, I thought he was joking at first.

I snort and switch the song on my phone. Fucking break up songs. Is that a joke?

How much of an idiot am I?

'I thought you should know, Lily-kins, I met this girl, Kim. She's in my regiment. We get married in a month. I know it's been a while, but I could think of only you to be my best woman.'

I watch the white flecks flow past the train window, getting quicker, though I'm not sure if it's just the speed of the train or if the snow is getting quicker.