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The train jerks into motion, and Niko has to grab August’s waist to keep her from tripping over her feet. Jane eyes them, Niko’s fingers clenched in the fabric of August’s jacket.
“You’re out late,” she observes.
“Yeah, we’re meeting my girlfriend in Soho,” Niko lies smoothly. It’s a trick of the light, August thinks, when a muscle in Jane’s jaw twitches and relaxes.
Niko nudges August toward a seat, and she focuses on not letting their impending interrogation of Jane’s corporeality telegraph across her face.
“Neat,” Jane says, a little sarcastically. “This book sucks anyway.” She flashes the cover—it’s an early edition of Watership Down, the orangey-red print rubbed halfway off. “I feel like I’ve read it a dozen times trying to figure out what people like about it. It’s a depressing book about bunnies. I don’t get it.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be an allegory?” Niko offers.
“A lot of people think that,” August says automatically. Her voice clips up into daughter-of-a-librarian mode, and she’s powerless to stop it. She’s too nervous. “Like, a lot of people think it’s religious symbolism, but Richard Adams said it was just some bunny adventures he made up for his daughters as a bedtime story.”
“Lot of carnage for a bedtime story,” Jane says.
“Yeah.”
“So, where have you been?” Jane asks her. “I feel like I haven’t seen you around.”
“Oh,” August says. She can’t tell her that she changed her entire commute in mourning of the joint Netflix account they’ll never share. “I—uh, I mean, we must keep missing each other. Odds are we were gonna get on different trains one of these days, right?”
Jane leans her chin on her hand. “Yeah, you would think.”
Niko crosses his legs and chimes in, “You two have really always been on the same train until now?”
“The same car, even,” Jane says. “It’s nuts.”
“Yeah,” he says. “The odds of that… wow.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess,” Jane says with a grin. And August is too busy trying to figure out everything else to figure out what that means. “I’m Jane, by the way.”
She leans forward and extends her hand to Niko, and excited curiosity sparks in his eyes like Myla presented him with an antique alarm clock. He takes it gingerly, folding his other hand on top, which would be weird or creepy if it was anyone but Niko. Jane’s smile softens, and August watches the faintest expression flitter across Niko’s face before he lets go.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” he asks her.
“Are you?” she says.
“I’m from Long Island,” Niko tells her. “But I spent a lot of time in the city before I moved here.”
“You came for college too?” Jane asks, gesturing between Niko and August.
“Nah. My girlfriend. College wasn’t really for me.” He runs a thumb along the edge of his seat, contemplative. “These trains always have the most interesting smells.”
“What, like piss?”
“No, like… you ever smell, like, petrichor? Or sulfur?”
Jane eyes him, tongue in the corner of her mouth. “I don’t think so? Piss, mostly. Sometimes someone spills their takeout and it’s piss and pork lo mein.”
“Uh-huh,” Niko says. “Interesting.”
“Your friend is weird,” Jane says to August, not unkindly. She doesn’t look annoyed, only mildly entertained, like she’s enjoying the turn her night has taken.
“He’s, uh,” August attempts, “really into smells?”
“Super into smells,” Niko says vaguely. “Love an aroma. You live in Brooklyn? Or Manhattan?”
She pauses before answering.
