it’s happening again how did it end?

The mechanic had said it would take at least four days.

Four days to replace a part that hadn't been manufactured in years and apparently had to be sourced from somewhere halfway across the country. Santi had nodded, accepted the explanation, and immediately assumed it would take at least a week.

His truck seemed to operate under the same laws as the rest of his life. Nothing was ever simple. Nothing was ever quick. Which was how he found himself sitting on a crowded subway train on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, surrounded by strangers and stale recycled air, wondering for perhaps the hundredth time if Frankie was right.

Maybe it was time.

Not for retirement. He wasn't sure men like him ever truly retired. But maybe it was time to stop pretending he could keep doing this forever.

Frankie had been on his case for months.

You should quit while you're still breathing.

You should find something normal.

You know, something where people don't shoot at you.

The suggestions changed every time they talked. Security work. A mechanic's garage. Construction. Anything that involved a predictable paycheck and significantly fewer bullets.

And maybe Frankie wasn't wrong.

The thought had been following him around lately, lingering in the quiet moments. During sleepless nights. During long drives. During those strange hours before dawn when the world felt suspended between yesterday and tomorrow.

The problem was that Santi had never been particularly good at imagining a future. Not a real one. Not one that stretched years ahead. His life had always existed in smaller increments. One job. One week. One mission. One day at a time.

Every time he tried to picture himself settling somewhere permanently, putting down roots, building something stable, the ghosts showed up.

Some belonged to him.

Some belonged to people he'd lost.

All of them followed him anyway.

The train slowed as it approached another station, pulling him from his thoughts. The familiar announcement crackled overhead. Around him, people gathered their bags, shifted toward the doors, prepared to leave.

Santi barely looked up. The doors slid open. Passengers stepped out. Others stepped in.

And somewhere in that ordinary exchange of bodies moving in opposite directions, his eyes landed on her.

At first, he wasn't entirely sure why. She wasn't doing anything remarkable. She simply stepped into the carriage and stopped near one of the poles, wrapping her fingers around the metal bar as the train lurched forward again. A backpack rested against one shoulder. A few loose strands of copper hair had escaped whatever attempt she'd made to keep them in place that morning.

Nothing unusual. Nothing that should have caught his attention. Yet a few seconds later he found himself looking again.

And then again.

The realization annoyed him immediately. He turned his gaze toward the window. A few seconds passed. When he looked back, she was still there. Of course she was. Where else would she be?

Santi suppressed a sigh.

It wasn't just that she was pretty, what she undeniably was. It was something harder to define. Something he couldn't quite put into words. There was a sadness about her. Not the dramatic kind, not the kind that demanded attention, but a quieter thing. Something soft and worn smooth around the edges.

The kind of sadness that had learned how to coexist with laughter. The kind that lived in a person's eyes even when they smiled.

For a brief moment she glanced up. Their eyes met.

Santi looked away immediately.

Dios mío.

Smooth.

He focused very intently on the subway map above the doors, studying it as though he had suddenly developed a passionate interest in public transportation.

A minute later, curiosity got the better of him.

When he risked another glance, he discovered she was looking at him again. This time she looked away first. Something unexpectedly warm settled in his chest, not because it meant anything, it probably didn't. But after that, it kept happening. A glance. Then another. A few seconds stretched between stations.

Neither of them smiled. Neither of them spoke.

Yet the awareness remained, like a thread neither of them acknowledged but both could feel.

Santi caught himself wondering if he should say something. Offer her his seat, maybe. Ask if she needed one. Ask literally anything.

He was still trying to come up with a sentence that didn't sound completely ridiculous when the train began slowing once more. Another station. The doors opened. She stepped off.

And just like that, she was gone.

The crowd swallowed her before he could even properly register that she was leaving.

For a moment, Santi found himself staring through the window as the platform drifted away behind them. Waiting. For what, he wasn't entirely sure.

He wasn't sure of what he felt either. Relief, perhaps. Embarrassment, maybe. Or the certainty that whatever strange spell had briefly taken hold of him would disappear now that she was gone.

Instead, he spent the rest of the journey wondering why he could still picture her eyes.

***

By the fifth day, Santi was officially annoyed with himself. Not because he missed her, that would have implied there had been something to miss.

A conversation.

A name.

A memory worth holding onto.

He had none of those things. He knew nothing about her. Not her name. Not her voice. He wasn't even entirely sure he would recognize her if he passed her on a crowded street.

Yet somehow he kept thinking about her.

The more he tried to push the memory aside, the worse it became. A glimpse of copper hair in a crowd would make him look twice. A familiar posture would catch his attention from across a station platform. Every afternoon, without meaning to, his eyes searched the subway carriage before he could stop them.

It was ridiculous.

Embarrassing.

The behaviour of a man twenty years younger than him.

The behaviour of someone who still believed in things like fate.

One afternoon, while waiting for the train, he caught his reflection in the station window and actually laughed at himself.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he muttered.

The reflection offered no answers. The train arrived. He boarded. And despite everything, his gaze immediately drifted toward the place where she had been standing that first day.

Empty. Of course.

The truck was fixed by then. He'd picked it up two days earlier. The sensible thing would have been to drive. Instead, every afternoon he found himself descending the station stairs and boarding the same train at the same time.

He told himself it has become a habit.

Convenience.

Curiosity.

Anything except the truth. Because the truth sounded pathetic even inside his own head. The truth was that a small, stubborn part of him hoped she might be there.

Some days he almost convinced himself he had imagined her. That perhaps she hadn't looked at him nearly as often as he remembered. That perhaps the entire thing had grown larger in his mind simply because he had nothing else to occupy the space.

Then he would remember her eyes, and the certainty would return.

Beautiful eyes.

Sad eyes.

The kind that seemed to carry entire stories behind them.

Maybe melancholy souls recognized one another.

The thought slipped into his mind before he could stop it.

Santi immediately grimaced.

Jesus Christ.

Now he really was losing his mind.

If he had been the sort of man who knew what to do with words, he was fairly certain he would have been writing poetry by now.

Bad poetry.

The kind Frankie would never let him live down.

Poetry about a girl whose name he didn't know and whose kind, world-weary eyes had somehow taken up permanent residence in his thoughts.

Fortunately for everyone involved, he wasn't that kind of man.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop him from thinking about her.

Somehow she remained lodged somewhere in the back of his mind, refusing to leave. He would catch himself thinking about her at random moments. While waiting for his coffee. While walking home. While standing in line at a grocery store.

Always the same brief memory. A pair of quiet and haunting eyes looking back at him across a crowded subway carriage.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

It was ridiculous. He knew it was ridiculous. Which was precisely why he didn't mention it to anyone.

Unfortunately, Frankie was Frankie.

That meant he noticed things. Far more things than he had any right to.

The realization came some days later. Santi was leaning against a workbench at Frankie's garage, absentmindedly turning a wrench over in his hands while Frankie explained something about an engine neither of them particularly cared about.

"... so if we replace the belt now, we won't have to deal with it again next month."

Silence. Frankie frowned.

"Santi."

No response.

"Santiago."

Still nothing. Frankie followed his gaze. The man wasn't even looking at anything. Just staring into space. Thinking.

Frankie immediately smiled. It was the kind of smile that should have been classified as a weapon.

"Oh."

Santi blinked, finally reacting.

"What?"

"Oh, this is good."

"What is?"

Frankie's grin widened.

"Who's she?"

The wrench nearly slipped from Santi's fingers.

"What do you mean? There isn't a she."

"Sure."

"There isn't."

"Of course."

Santi rolled his eyes.

"Frankie."

"Santi."

The familiarity of the response made him groan. Frankie folded his arms.

"You've been distracted all week."

"I've been tired."

"You spent ten minutes staring at a wrench yesterday."

"I was thinking."

"Exactly."

Santi pointed at him.

"That's a completely normal thing for people to do."

Frankie barked out a laugh.

"Not you."

"Thanks."

"You hate thinking."

"I don't hate thinking."

"You absolutely hate thinking."

"I don't."

"You literally spent most of your twenties solving problems by throwing yourself through them."

"That's not true."

Frankie raised an eyebrow. Santi considered it.

"...Okay, sometimes."

"Who's the girl?"

"There is no girl."

Frankie waited. Santi waited. Neither moved.

The silence stretched.

Eventually Santi sighed. Frankie immediately looked victorious.

The bastard.

"I saw someone on the subway."

Frankie stared. Then blinked. Then stared some more.

"That's it?"

"What do you mean, that's it?"

"You saw someone?"

"Yes."

"A stranger?"

"Yes."

"You are like that because of a complete stranger?"

"Frankie."

Frankie looked genuinely amused.

"Santi, you survived Colombia and now you're getting emotionally compromised by public transportation."

"Nobody is emotionally compromised."

"And now you're gonna take the same train every afternoon until you find her again."

Santi froze. Frankie's grin became insufferable.

"You've been taking the same train every afternoon."

"You don't know that."

"I absolutely know that."

"Damn it, Morales."

Frankie laughed so hard he nearly dropped the rag in his hand. For the next five minutes he refused to let it go. Santi endured every joke. Every comment. Every exaggerated prediction about wedding invitations and future godchildren.

By the time he finally escaped, he was seriously considering finding a new best friend.

Unfortunately, Frankie was right about one thing: he had been taking the same train. Every day. At the same time.

Not because he expected anything.

Not because he believed in fate.

And certainly not because he was hoping to see her again.

At least that was what he told himself.

The lie became harder to maintain with each passing day.

A week went by. Then another. Nothing. No sign of her. No familiar face among the crowds.

No glimpse of sad eyes across the carriage.

Nothing.

Eventually even Santi began to feel stupid. The entire thing had become embarrassing. A grown man rearranging part of his routine because of a woman he had never even spoken to.

The realization settled heavily in his chest as he boarded the train one Thursday afternoon. This was the last time. Seriously. No more. After today he would drive his old truck everywhere, as he had always done. He would stop looking. Stop wondering. Stop acting like some lovesick teenager.

Shaking his head at himself, he dropped into one of the seats and rested his elbows on his knees. The train pulled away from the station. People entered. People left. The familiar rhythm continued around him.

Santi kept his gaze fixed on the floor. One stop.

Then another. And another. The train slowed again. The doors opened. More passengers climbed aboard. Someone settled into the empty seat beside him. He barely noticed. Until a voice spoke.

"Good afternoon."

Soft. Warm. Unexplainably familiar.

His heart stumbled. Just once, hard enough to hurt. Slowly, Santi lifted his head… and there she was. Looking at him with a small, shy smile, as though she wasn't entirely sure she should have spoken either.

For a second neither of them said anything else. The noise of the train faded into the background. The crowd disappeared, everything narrowing to her eyes.

The same eyes he had spent more than two weeks trying and failing to forget.

"Hi," he answered softly.

Her smile widened.

And suddenly, impossibly, Santi found himself wondering if maybe he hadn't been the only idiot taking the same train every day.

Thanks for reading~ 💜