Edward saw her every day until he didn't.
Quick glances, none that lasted more than seconds. For a year now, he could count on one hand the number of times their encounters would linger for more than that on the packed commuter train during the rush hour home, and he'd wonder.
He would wonder because that's all he could do. Bodies would bump and shuffle against one another, the conversation was always absent - not even stilted - as people ignored each other in their vacuums of whatever playlist got them through their commutes home. Even he, he admitted, as he stole glances at her; wondering what got her through the day as she looked so often in thought during these encounters. Not dazed, not begging for the warmth and peace of home like so many others, but thankful for the freedom the commute home had granted her.
An encounter- it wasn't even that - he admonished himself, but for the second she passed by him each and every time, every day. The fated passing adorned to him by the gods of the unreserved coach U; there was something more in her polite smile, the way their eyes locked and how the agitation of the day washed from him as if she were a cooling breeze.
He could only ever smile back and wonder how he could never get closer to her in the 20 minutes on that train home before he continued onto his final stop.