Inertia by Yunya Yang

The train hurries past unfamiliar landmarks, and she realizes too late that she was supposed to get off two stops ago, maybe four. She looks around to the door, past bulky bodies in puffy coats lodged together like Tetris blocks. She, too, is a block in the jigsaw of limbs,  watching the signs of each stop whooshing by: Diversey, Wellington, Belmont.

The train won’t stop till Howard, and it’s already six o’clock. They’ll be stuck in traffic later, on the way to Iowa, where her boyfriend’s parents live. He is taking her to see them for the first time. 

Is she excited? Yes. Yes, because meeting parents must mean things are serious, and she wants things to be serious. Serious is the right track; she’s on the right track.  The guy standing next to her reminds her of an ex. Not the immediate ex—maybe two or four exes ago. The same ruffled brown hair, broad shoulders. He has those lips that are kind of puffy, like the petal of a peony. Is he a good kisser? She wonders as he starts talking to her,  smiling with his eyes. 

Did she miss Howard, too? Her phone vibrates in her pocket, but she ignores it as the ex look-alike tells her a story. He laughs, which is a cue for her to laugh as well, and she does. Her voice sounds false in her own ears, like when you try to reach a note that’s just outside of your range.  

Buildings are swiftly retreating as the train speeds forward. Jagged tree branches brush by, half-shaded in snow, white only on the side the wind blows. The guy is asking what she is doing later and if she wants to grab a drink. What if she says yes? They get that drink and he talks some more and they kiss and she finds out he’s an okay kisser, not great but not bad either, and they start getting more drinks or dinners, at different places, and they move in together, and he writes her love letters at anniversaries, ones that he’s copied from the internet, and she gets him birthday gifts, whiskey sets or grooming kits that came up on Google as best gift ideas for men, and he takes her to see his parents, and soon they either split up or stick together for good, and more and more people tell her that the clock is ticking, so to beat the clock she has two-point-five kids in quick succession, with him or another guy, and the family moves into a cookie-cutter house and she gets up early to make breakfast and drop off the kids before catching a train to work and dozing off and missing her stop. 

The train jolts to a halt. She needs to get off. She wades through the cocooned bodies.  Only a couple more steps to the door and she can feel the cold air caressing her face—but more people are getting on and pushing her in. They flood into the car with bulging backpacks, and she sinks deeper in the tide. She is desperate to get off, and they are equally desperate to get on. The conductor’s voice seeps through the speaker, almost drowned by the howling wind outside, let them out first, let them out! But they do not let her out, and the door slides closed.  The train starts, and she stays on.

Yunya Yang was born and raised in Central China and moved to the US when she was eighteen. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in trampset, Bending Genres, and Brilliant  Flash Fiction, among others. Find her on Twitter @YangYunya.