She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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It took a lot for me to feel safe.
The feeling of safety was one I lacked during most of my childhood, which later transitioned into illusive paranoia that very rarely turned out to be accurate. Programmed to panic even in the absence of danger, my mind incessantly convinced me to feel distrusting of every environment, removing my ability to relax in my surroundings even when I knew I was perfectly safe.
Strangely enough, in a town I had never been in or on a train I had never taken were one of the few places I actually felt safe. The concept of being in a place enigmatic and undiscovered to me was oddly calming, and I felt more at home on a random train than I did in the house I lived in.
In a way, Romeo was a place I was yet to discover, full of uncharted streets and unknown revelations I still had time to explore, like the myriads of destinations reachable on a train. Perhaps that's why, as I sat beside Romeo, cocooned into his side while we spun around on the roundabout like little kids, I felt a small surge of safety.
"Okay, wait, let's stop for a second," Romeo breathed out, stepping off the gradually moving platform as he was nothing but a spinning blur in my vision. I felt a brief chill when the warmth from his body left my side as he stood up, closing his eyes while he held a hand to his chest. "I don't think I've ever been dizzier in my entire life..."
"You get dizzy often?"
"More times than you could count." He sighed, tugging on his hood before opening his eyes. "But at least this time it was worth it," he smiled, glancing down at me as I leaned back, resting my head against one of the bars with my knees to my chest.
"I hate that I missed out on this," I commented, closing my eyes just as I caught sight of Romeo's empathetic expression. Even with my eyes closed, his face was imprinted into my mind, the slight crease in his forehead and the concern pooling in his dark brown eyes. "I hate that I could have felt like this when I was at kid, but I didn't get to."
The racing of my heart as my laughter filled the air from when we'd spun too fast and I'd fallen off, the tingles on my skin from feeling the night-time air rush over me, the flush on my cheeks from smiling too hard, the warmth and the care I was receiving from a stranger that my own parents should have given me. "I could have felt all this years ago..."
"I know it's doesn't change the past," I heard Romeo's voice just above me, my eyes fluttering open to see him sending me a sanguine smile. "But at least... at least you get to experience it now. And for the rest of your life you can too."
I nodded weakly, barely noticeable to the normal eye but it didn't manage to escape Romeo's attentive gaze. That all depends if I actually choose to stay down here and live it.
I was snapped out of my pensiveness when Romeo held his hands out to help me up, looking down at me in an expectant manner as I furrowed my eyebrows questioningly. "We have a lot of things to do, and not a lot of time to do them Cass," he explained concisely, despite full well knowing that I knew he was making our destinations up as we went along. "We need to get going."
