The Train to Where We Were Still in Love

The Train to Where We Were Still in Love

I bought the ticket on impulse — the 9:15 AM to Windmere, the same train we used to take every anniversary.

He always said the ride was better than the destination. "It's like time forgets to move when you're on a train," he’d whisper, resting his head against the window. And I’d nod, pretending I didn’t already know I’d remember that moment forever.

Now, I step onto the platform alone, clutching a paper ticket that already feels too heavy.

The train hasn’t changed. Same olive green seats, same scratchy upholstery. The windows are still slightly fogged at the edges, like the train prefers to keep its memories a little blurry. I choose the same car we always sat in — third from the back, left side, by the window.

Our seat.

I sit where he used to.

The doors close. The train lurches forward.

It’s happening.

I’m back on this ride, not to see the lakes or the fields, but to find the pieces of us we left behind in between stops.

The first time we rode this train, it was pouring outside. He had forgotten an umbrella, and we were both soaked by the time we boarded. We laughed the entire ride. I remember how our hands found each other on the seat between us — not holding, not yet, just touching like a secret.

That was the beginning.

We were two people collapsing into something beautiful.

A young couple sits across the aisle now. They’re whispering and smiling like they’ve invented love. I envy them, but only a little. Mostly I want to warn them: don’t forget the little things — they disappear first.

He used to bring me coffee before I woke up. Black with one sugar.

I stopped drinking coffee after the divorce.

Now it just tastes like endings.

At the next stop, a woman with a newborn gets on. The baby is asleep in a sling across her chest. She doesn’t see me, but I see her — and I remember.

We tried, once.

Once.

I don’t know if it would’ve changed anything, having a child. Maybe we would’ve stayed together longer. Maybe we would’ve broken faster. Maybe the love we gave would’ve found a new home.

The train hums along the tracks like it knows the rhythm of my memory. I close my eyes and pretend he’s beside me again — his knee brushing mine, his voice low and warm, asking me what I’m thinking. He always asked that.

Eventually, I stopped answering.

Eventually, he stopped asking.

The next memory is harder.

We were on this train the year things began to crack. I remember staring out the window while he scrolled through emails. We’d gone silent. Not the angry kind, just… thin silence. Like the space between us had stretched. We made small talk about scenery, but I was counting every word he didn’t say.

I think we both knew then.

Love doesn’t always die loudly.

Sometimes, it just quiets down until you can’t hear it anymore.

We divorced in spring.

It was calm, civil, painfully polite. Like two strangers returning a shared book. “Thank you for the story. It was good. But it’s over now.”

The train slows for a tunnel. Everything goes dark for a moment.

I hold my breath.

When the light returns, I notice something.

A small boy is watching me from the seat behind the couple. He smiles shyly and offers me a piece of his cookie.

I laugh — the first real sound I’ve made in hours. I take the cookie and whisper “thank you.”

That simple kindness feels like a thread tugging me forward.

As we near Windmere, the fields roll past in blurs of gold and green.

I think about how love changes — how sometimes it stays, even after the people go. It hides in old train rides and secondhand bookstores and the way morning light looks on someone’s face.

I think maybe I’ll come back next year. Not for him. Not for us.

But for me.

For the girl who first held hands in the rain.

For the woman who forgot how to laugh and is learning again.

The train pulls into the station.

I don’t get off.

I stay on until the final stop.

Some loves are destinations.

Others are just rides that teach you how to get home again — even if home looks different now.

And as the doors close behind the last passenger, I whisper to the empty seat beside me:

“Thank you for the story. It was good.”