One Stop Closer (Travelling Diaries #1)

Chapter 1 First Glance

The Man at the Pole

By the time Elliot Navarro stepped out of the glass doors of the software company, he felt as though he had been holding his breath since morning.

The evening air should have felt like a relief after nine hours beneath fluorescent lights and chilled office air, but even outside, his shoulders remained tense.

His laptop bag rested against one shoulder, his phone was still buzzing with messages he had no intention of answering, and the collar of his formal shirt felt tighter than it had when he arrived that morning.

He paused on the pavement and glanced back at the building.

The tall glass structure reflected the orange glow of the setting sun, making it look warm and inviting from the outside.

Elliot knew better. He had spent most of the day in conference rooms where everyone smiled politely while disagreeing with one another, followed by hours of writing technical explanations for people who would probably ask him to explain them again tomorrow.

His manager had thanked him twice for staying late. The first time had sounded appreciative. The second had sounded like an expectation.

Elliot had smiled both times.

That was what he was good at.

He was good at being agreeable when he wanted to say no.

He was good at listening when he was exhausted.

He was good at making difficult things sound manageable and hiding irritation behind a calm expression.

Even when someone dumped another task onto his already crowded schedule, he had learned to respond with a polite nod instead of asking why it always seemed to happen to him.

His family liked that quality in him too.

Reliable Elliot.

Responsible Elliot.

The son who had a stable career, dressed properly, spoke respectfully, and never created unnecessary problems.

Sometimes he wondered whether anyone actually knew what he wanted.

The thought disappeared beneath the sound of traffic as he started walking toward the metro station.

The station was only a few minutes away, but the evening crowd made the short journey feel longer.

Office workers moved toward the entrance in groups, students laughed around the ticket machines, and vendors called out to commuters rushing toward the platforms. Elliot slipped through the crowd with practiced ease, checking the arrival time on his phone as he descended the stairs.

Four minutes.

He could make it.

The train arrived just as he reached the platform, and the doors opened to reveal a carriage already packed with passengers. Elliot hesitated for half a second before stepping inside with everyone else.

There was no point waiting for the next one.

The doors closed behind him, and the train pulled away from the station.

Elliot immediately realized he had made the wrong decision.

There were too many people and not enough space.

Shoulders pressed against shoulders, bags occupied every possible corner, and the constant movement of the carriage made it difficult to stand comfortably.

Someone’s backpack brushed against his arm as he moved farther inside, searching for something he could hold.

He finally found a vertical metal pole near the center of the carriage.

He wrapped one hand around it and adjusted his laptop bag with the other.

For the first time since leaving the office, he allowed himself to breathe properly.

Then he noticed the man standing on the opposite side of the pole.

Elliot’s first thought was that the stranger looked completely out of place among the commuters.

Not because he was poorly dressed. If anything, there was something deliberate about the way he carried himself.

He wore a dark sleeveless shirt that exposed muscular arms covered almost completely in tattoos.

Black ink traveled from his wrists up toward his shoulders, disappearing beneath the fabric.

His forearms were strong and heavily defined, the kind of strength that looked earned rather than manufactured for a gym mirror.

His hair was dark and slightly untidy, as though he had run his fingers through it several times and stopped caring about the result. A short beard framed a hard jaw, and there was a small silver ring in one ear.

He looked rough.

Not careless.

There was a difference.

His clothes were simple, but everything about him suggested someone who didn’t spend much time worrying about whether strangers approved of him.

Elliot found himself looking at the tattoos first.

There were so many of them that he couldn’t make sense of the whole picture.

A dark geometric pattern covered part of the man’s upper arm, while another tattoo stretched across his forearm in a design Elliot couldn’t identify from where he stood.

There was something almost artistic about the collection, although the man himself looked as though he would laugh at anyone who described him that way.

Elliot looked away.

He told himself it was only curiosity.

A few seconds later, he looked again.

The stranger was staring directly at him.

Elliot’s stomach tightened.

He hadn’t expected to be caught.

He immediately looked down at his phone and pretended to read the notifications on his screen. There were three new work messages and one from his mother asking whether he would be home for dinner on Sunday.

He opened none of them.

Instead, he became strangely aware of everything around him.

The movement of the train.

The vibration beneath his shoes.

The warmth of another person’s shoulder near his.

The faint scent of something clean and smoky coming from the tattooed man across from him.

Elliot glanced up again.

The stranger was no longer looking at him.

That should have made him feel relieved.

Instead, Elliot felt disappointed.

He frowned at himself and shifted his attention toward the dark window. The city outside had become a blur of lights, buildings, and passing streets. Reflections moved across the glass, creating ghostly versions of the passengers inside the carriage.

His own reflection looked exactly as it always did.

Neat hair.

Thin-framed glasses.

Formal trousers.

A pale sleeveless shirt beneath his jacket, which he had removed because of the heat inside the carriage.

Nothing about him suggested that he belonged in the same visual world as the tattooed stranger.

The comparison made Elliot smile faintly.

He didn’t know why.

Perhaps because the contrast was so obvious.

The stranger looked like someone who would walk into a room and make people move aside.

Elliot looked like someone who would apologize for standing in the wrong place.

He turned his attention back to the window.

The train slowed as it approached the next station. Several passengers shifted toward the doors, creating a brief pocket of space around Elliot. He loosened his grip on the pole and adjusted his bag.

When the train started moving again, his eyes wandered toward the stranger almost automatically.

This time, he noticed something different.

The man’s gaze wasn’t hard.

It was curious.

There was a slight crease between his eyebrows, as though he was trying to figure Elliot out.

Elliot wondered what he looked like from the stranger’s perspective.

Probably too polished.

Too careful.

Maybe boring.

The thought shouldn’t have bothered him.

For some reason, it did.

He looked down at his hand around the pole and noticed that his fingers were still tense from work. He loosened them slowly.

The stranger shifted his weight.

Their eyes met again.

Elliot couldn’t immediately look away.

There was no obvious reason for the moment to feel important. They were two strangers standing in a crowded metro carriage on an ordinary weekday evening. Neither had spoken. Neither knew the other’s name. Neither had any reason to remember the other once the train reached its destination.

Yet something about the stranger’s expression held Elliot in place.

The man’s eyes moved briefly over Elliot’s face, stopping at his glasses before returning to his eyes.

Elliot swallowed.

He suddenly became conscious of the way he was standing, the way his shirt fit across his shoulders, the slight looseness of his hair after a long day, even the tired expression he knew he had been carrying since morning.

He wondered if the stranger could see how nervous he had become.

Then, unexpectedly, the stranger’s mouth curved into the faintest hint of a smile.

It wasn’t a warm smile.

It wasn’t exactly friendly either.

It looked more like amusement.

As though the stranger knew Elliot had been staring and found the whole thing entertaining.

Heat rose into Elliot’s face.

He looked away at once.

He stared at the route map above the doors as though he had suddenly developed a deep interest in public transportation.

His heart was beating faster than it should have.

He tried to explain it logically.

Maybe it was the crowded carriage.

Maybe he was simply exhausted.

Maybe the stranger was unusually attractive and Elliot had forgotten, for a few seconds, how to behave normally.

That last explanation made him uncomfortable.

He had dated before, although never seriously. His relationships had always been carefully chosen, carefully managed, and eventually ended with the same quiet realization that he had been going through the motions because it was easier than admitting he wanted something different.

He had never looked at a stranger on a metro and felt this kind of sudden awareness.

The train entered a darker stretch of track, and the windows reflected the inside of the carriage more clearly.

Elliot glanced at the glass.

He could see himself.

He could also see the tattooed stranger behind him.

For a moment, their reflections stood side by side.

Then the stranger’s eyes lifted in the reflection.

He was looking at Elliot again.

Elliot turned his head.

Their eyes met directly.

This time neither of them looked away.