The Cab

THE LIBRARY  —  FICTION

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They had been colleagues for two years before anything happened. Shared an office wall, a coffee machine, a running disagreement about whether the window should be open. He thought she was difficult. She thought he was inflexible. Both were right.

The night it changed was a Tuesday in November, a work event that had gone on too long. Everyone else had left. They were standing at the coat check and she said something that made him laugh — not the polite laugh she usually got from him but the real one, the one that reached his eyes — and something shifted. She felt it. He felt it. Neither of them said anything.

They shared a cab because it made logistical sense. She lived further, so she would drop him first. The ride was twenty minutes and they talked the whole way without the usual friction — easy, unguarded, like two people who had just met instead of two people who had been carefully managing each other for years.

When the cab stopped he didn’t get out immediately. A beat. Two beats. The driver was silent. The street outside was quiet.

“Come up,” he said. Not a question. Not quite a command. Something in between — an offer that left the decision to her, which she understood and appreciated.

She thought about the morning. About the office wall between them. About the two years of careful distance and the very specific way this would change everything.

She paid the driver and got out of the cab.

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EDITOR’S PICK  —  CURATED BY VESPER