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He stepped off the train.
He took a few strides in the direction of his usual exit and then halted abruptly.
GET BACK ON!
Without stopping to think about where that voice had come from, he immediately ran to the next car and snuck in right as the doors were closing, having to turn his body sideways to fit through.
Now what?
He looked to the end of the car at the connecting doors. It wasn’t a perfectly clear view, but he could see through the glass and just make her out. She was sitting with the bag on her lap, holding it just like she often did with a book. Her lids had fluttered closed and her fingertips were running over the paper as if she was reading it without the use of her eyes. Green. They were green. He had noticed them when he handed her the gift. Green like the rolling hills of his home on a lush late summer afternoon.
Eventually she opened those eyes and reached into the bag. For the next twenty minutes, he watched her, absolutely transfixed.
It was an entirely different experience than watching her read a book.
Those were just books. Just black markings on a page.
These?
These were pieces of him.
Pieces of his mind.
Pieces of his heart.
When she opened the first envelope, a strange sensation of nervousness was tingling through him like pins and needles.
He realized that he was almost trembling a bit in excitement, almost standing on tiptoe in childlike anticipation of her reaction.
She opened that first envelope, and each subsequent one, with gentle care, treating the paper with what appeared to be a sort of reverence. That alone made the breath hitch in his throat.
Removing the folded yellow sheets with the same respect, she delicately smoothed out the paper and let her palm glide over it. Her gaze shifted just a bit and he guessed that she was looking for his name first. When he saw her smile and mouth “Tom,” he was guess was confirmed. He didn’t realize that she had been leaning forward until she settled back against the hard plastic of the tube seat and began to read the letters.
It was an odd thing, to desire the approval of a stranger like this. He had seen her cry and laugh and react to words before, he had witnessed how they thrilled her. He wanted the same thing for the words he had written to her, for her, and about her. He wanted to see her shoulders shake while she stifled a giggled. He wanted to see her little fingers brush away a tear. He wanted to see her be so overcome that she had to stop reading for a moment. He wanted those things. He wanted to inspire them. He wanted to see them. He needed to see them.
Even though he hadn’t let himself look back and edit the letters or even read them once he finished them, he could remember most of them in detail. As she read the second one and giggled for the first time, his brain sifted through the data and he remembered that he had included his first pun, one about an author that he had seen her read more than once.
She laughed.
He remembered how he felt as a child when his dad use to grip his hands and spin him around and around so that he was parallel to the ground, giggling and flying through the air until they were both dizzy and collapsed onto the carpet.
That was this.
He made her laugh.
He did.
Not some faceless writer who would never see her emerald eyes or hear her sweet voice or know her name or –
But.
But he didn’t know her name.
He didn’t even know her name.
She was a stranger to him.
The unexpected pang of discomfort made him shift his position and lean against the side of the car, as if that could ease the rising storm of currently unclassifiable emotions that were swirling around inside him.
It was the fourth letter that drew the first tears.
What was in that one?
Ah, yes, the anecdote about his childhood.
I remember my grandmother reading to me while I sat at her feet and helped her ball yarn. She always had a Bible or something from C.S. Lewis or someone similar on her little sewing table and would open it randomly. I don’t know exactly how, but I remembered a favorite quote from one of those authors. I confess, I had to do a quick search on the internet to discover that it is by G. K. Chesterton.
“Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.”
You, little blue stocking, are my perfect stranger.
When she folded that fourth one and delicately returned it to the envelope and then proceeded to adjust her bag and stand, it occurred to me that I hadn’t thought past the act of watching her read them.
What now?
She was getting off.
She was going to leave.
My blue stocking.
My perfect stranger.
Thoughts seemed to fly through my brain at a rapid speed.
She’s going to think you’re a crazy stalker.
NO, SHE WON’T!
Do not try to follow her, mate.
FOLLOW HER!
You’re going to be out of the country for months.
IT’S HER COUNTRY, SHE CAN VISIT!
She could be married or in a relationship.
DON’T WASTE TIME!
She could be a judo expert. She might crush your windpipe. You’ll never act again.
YOU’RE BEING RIDICULOUS. JUST INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
You don’t even know her name. She didn’t tell you what it is. That must have been deliberate.
I stepped off the train.
I couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t wise. I didn’t want to frighten her. I didn’t want to leave her with a terrible memory. I would leave with her a pile of love letters from a stranger and would always remain as such to her, something she could think of for years to come and remember with a sigh about what might have been.
Yes.
That was the only wise way.
I purposely hung back and let the crowd pass, seeing her pink coat disappear into the sea of passengers. I waited a few more minutes, just to be safe, and in the process I remembered that one of my favorite cafes was just a few blocks from this station. Might as well stop for a cuppa and give myself a talking to about proper behavior, which most definitely does not include following strangers and potentially scaring them out of their wits.
It was summer and still light outside when I emerged from the station. The fresh air helped me clear my head and I began to feel horribly embarrassed about what I had one. Of course it was harmless to me, but she wouldn’t have any proof of what kind of person I was other than the contents of my letters, and those could have been complete and utter falsities. I knew I had a tendency to become single-minded, rather dogged in my preparation for a role, but I had never let it push me this far previously. Endangering another person or even giving them cause to think that they were in danger was simply unacceptable.
I was in the process of mentally calling myself every name in my arsenal of insults as I entered the café when a soft voice made me freeze in my tracks.
“Tom?”
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t turn around.
“Tom, I thought you got off the train?”
I didn’t know my heart could speed up so rapidly in a few seconds.
It was time to face the music and dance.
I willed myself to turn and face her.
She was looking at me with those emerald eyes and a tense smile, but a smile, nonetheless.
I swallowed.
“Yes, I did. But I got back on. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I wanted to see you read them. I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t know you would be here. I am so sorry.”
I was moving to head back to the doors and run away, run far far away and hope to feel like a sensible human being again one day.
But one of her little hands reached out to grasp at mine and I stopped: however, I was still facing the doors, facing away from her. I couldn’t face her. I had never been more embarrassed in my entire life.
“Tom, will you please look at me?”
I complied immediately.
I could see that she was feeling nervous and was completely aware of how awkward this situation was.
She smiled again, this time it was fuller and brighter and now I couldn’t look away.
“The letters are beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for the…”
Her already rosy cheeks were quickly turning a shade or two closer to red.
“Thank you for the lovely things you wrote about me.”
SAY SOMETHING!
“You’re welcome.”
Oh, that was brilliant.
She licked her lips and took a deep breath.
“I’ve only read a few of them, but I already know so much about you. You don’t know anything about me. Do you…do you want to know something about me the way that I know things about you, the way that you shared yourself with me? You can refuse and I will understand.”
Her voice was brimming with hesitancy and hope; she was giving me an out in the form of that question in case I wasn’t interested. After all, I had said “Goodbye” to her when I gave her the bag; perhaps she was thinking that was the end on my part, a word signaling the finality of what I wanted to give. She was stepping out a limb for me.
I was so happy in that moment, I wanted to do a cartwheel right there in the café.
You’ve been granted a reprieve, old thing. Don’t waste it.
“Well, since you’re offering, I would like to know if you would forgive me for…for…”
For being forward. For being -
“Yes,” she answered with a smile, stopping me from berating myself again and inspiring me with a rush of gratitude that she hadn’t tried to finish my sentence.
“And…I would love to know your name.”
She offered me a hand.
“Hi, Tom. I’m Elinor. Now we are no longer strangers.”
I took her little hand in mine.
Maybe not. But I’m still going to write you love letters.