Thank you to everyone who has read and commented so far! I hope you are enjoying the ride ( no pun intended). It's a fun one for me.
Also: the amount of research I did on the NYC subway for this chapter was overly so. My muscle memory is failing me. :)
Her
This has to be the worst idea she's ever had.
A truly terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea, to quote a book her father used to read to her before bed ad nauseam as a child. Then again, while she does not claim to be a literary scholar, she cannot deny the truth of the current situation.
Shifting the violin case from one hand to another, she glances around trying to get her bearings in the fathomless depths of the subway. She's been in New York less than 48 hours and she's already nearly been trampled on the sidewalk, walked into the wrong building four times and nearly taken some poor soul out with the said violin case.
Vaguely, she wonders if that fact could classify her father's precious violin as a weapon?
She blinks the thought away. Better to just not go down that path.
Heaving a sign, she tries to scoot out of oncoming foot traffic as she tries to gather her bearings. Counting today, this is the eighth time she's found herself lost, confused and utterly overwhelmed by this new city, it's 8.25 million people, and it's "oh, it's a breeze once you get the hang of it!" underground train.
She idly makes a mental note to kill Meg when she finally does get home.
If she can find it, that is.
The thought causes her to allow herself a momentary pity party, shoulders slumping forward, violin case knocking into her left knee and she allows a whispered curse as pain shoots through the joint. She is, quite frankly, exhausted; physically, mentally, emotionally and she blinks back tears that have nothing to do with her now-aching knee.
You should be here, Dad. Not me.
He's only been gone five months, but it's five months too long and, not for the first time, she questions if she ever should have left their brownstone in Chicago. She misses the historic buildings, the deep dish pizza, and, to her horror, she even finds herself missing the far-off din of Wrigley Field when the Cubs hit a homer.
When Meg had shown up at her door with with wine, her favorite ice cream, and an offer in to mailbox to join the New York City ballet on her kitchen table, she dared to think a change was what she needed to pull herself out of the grief.
An offer of rent-free lodging with Meg and her Mother in the Upper East side had made the decision that much easier.
Now if she could only get back to the Upper East Side where a bubble bath and warm bed awaited her return.
North and South were easy enough to figure out- uptown, downtown were self-explanatory. Figuring out the east-west trains? Not so much.
Which was exactly how she had found herself sharing a moment with an alluring stranger on the uptown A train.
She knew almost instantly that she had boarded the wrong line as soon as she glanced up to the station list, noting that E 96th St was not an option, recalling Meg's seemingly simple instructions.
Her heart seized when realization hit, her body ready to enlist 'flight' mode when her eyes had drifted down…
…and locked securely on his.
She could tell he'd been staring, and a gasp had escaped when she found herself staring into the most arresting eyes she'd ever seen. Somewhere between shades of green and gray, his had been an intensely quiet study while at the same time leaving her feeling as if she'd been stripped bare.
There was a vague familiarity about him, but her mind was in no place to shuffle through the options. Instead, she held his gaze as she stepped back, thudding into someone else with her violin case and snapping her back to reality.
The spell was broken as she managed to squeeze out of the car just before the doors shut, muttering profuse apologies to the victim of her violin's aggressive assault.
She is still thinking of him, twenty minutes later in the bowels of the 42nd street station as she searches for the green line- confirmed by texts with Meg- and she wonders off-handley if she'll ever see him again- her familiar stranger with the gemstone eyes.
She hopes she does, but seeing him again would be like finding a diamond in the desert; unlikely and miraculous.
Still, as much as his eyes captured her attention, it is not the most intriguing feature she noticed.
Rather the gleaming white mask that framed them.