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And that was how I became just another of those people crying as they walked down the street.
I felt invisible. Unimportant. My tears were more from frustration and anger than true sadness. I was stuck in an untenable position with Mrs Reynolds, trapped working for her. She had this way of making me feel lesser, like I was a pointless human barely fit to lick her boots.
A part of me just wished I’d let loose and told her exactly what I thought of her. I wished I’d told her where she could shove her job.
But no. A moment of righteous indignation wasn’t in the cards for me, sadly.
I couldn’t afford one.
I dug some tissues from my bag and dabbed away the tears. There wasn’t much I could do about the redness, but hopefully, no one would notice.
I especially hoped he wouldn’t notice.
Unlike how Mrs Reynolds made me feel, I never felt invisible when I was around him.
My stranger from the bus. We’d never spoken, but one day, I caught him watching me, and now, I was always aware of him. He was the bright spot of my week. When Mrs Reynolds was in a particularly critical mood, I always looked forward to seeing his face. He seemed to be around my age, early thirties, and he must’ve lived nearby because we both got off at the same stop.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. The bloke could be a serial killer, but that wasn’t the vibe I got from him, and I had experience with bad people, thanks to my mother and the chaotic childhood she put me through.
The man on the bus, I couldn’t imagine him being anything like Mam or the string of boyfriends who’d lived with us. He had an interesting face, a time traveller’s face, I liked to think. It was the sort of face you saw in old, black-and-white photos from the turn of the century. The face of a soldier who’d fought in World War I. Or someone’s great-great-grandfather who worked in a factory long since shut down that made commodities the world no longer had need for.
He reminded me of a young Richard Burton back when he was just a working-class Welsh lad before that acting teacher swept him away from his humble beginnings, gave him a new name and turned him into a star.
My upstairs neighbour, Siobhan, and I watched a documentary about Burton a few months ago, and I hadn’t been able to forget how much he reminded me of the man from the bus. Well, except the man on the bus was much larger and taller than Burton. In fact, he was large in a way that was slightly intimidating. People rarely took the seat next to him, not unless the bus was jam packed and there were no other options.
We took the same route to work every morning and the same one home in the evening. He dressed plainly in black pants, a black shirt and a grey jacket, his clothes inexpensive and well-worn. I sensed that whatever he did for a living wasn’t fancy. He always looked bone tired at the end of the day, just as I did.
He was a scraping by quiet type, too, it seemed.
Perhaps that was why he looked at me that first day. He sensed a kinship. The way he stared at me was strangely intense, but the only discomfort I felt was my inability to break the wall of silence to ask, Who are you?
I wanted to know why he always looked at me. Did he wonder if we were the same?
There were lots of other people waiting at the bus stop when I arrived. I spotted him standing behind two older men chatting amiably as they waited. One had a newspaper tucked under his arm, and the other wore clothes stained with dust and debris, a construction labourer. His eyes remained steady on the middle distance as rush hour traffic went by sluggishly on the road. My attention ran over his short, dark hair and his eyes. I still couldn’t quite tell what colour they were. Sometimes they looked green, other times grey.
I stood next to a smartly dressed woman, one of the city’s many office types, keeping my head down so as not to draw attention to my red, puffy eyes. My pride still smarted after the dressing down I’d received from Mrs Reynolds, and I really didn’t feel like being looked at.
I heard the rumble of the bus and smelled the overpowering odour of diesel from the engine as it rolled to a stop.
Finally, I thought, I’m one step closer to curling up in my pyjamas and settling in with my latest audiobook. I certainly needed a cosy, relaxing night after the day I’d had.
I glanced up for just a second, the back of my neck prickling as I sensed someone’s attention. He was looking at me.
