Emma looked out from under the shelter of the bus stop, her face shrouded by smoke as she lifted the cigarette from her lips and the glow of its tip gently faded. The smoke blew up around her and swirled away into the night. Rain fell into the dark street so hard and fast, and as she watched it she felt as if the rain was falling in another world, so far away from the dry stillness she resided in.

And so she stood, looking out into the road, her heart racing at each sight of a car’s approaching headlights. But so far there was no sign of the car she was waiting for. He had told her that she should look for a silver Escort, “R reg” he had said. He had bought a new car for the occasion, using a false name and address. He had driven all the way to Newcastle and paid for it in cash. He had everything covered, he had said, he wasn’t going to let her slip through his fingers. So each time a car came past she squinted in the dark trying to make out the first letter of its registration plate, but they were always moving too fast, it was dark and their headlights were bright, they seared the backs of her eyes. Just like a child being told not to look at the sun, she kept turning back to the road, hopeful and blinded each time.

Her cigarette was by now burning down to her fingers, and she drew heavily on it before flicking it into a puddle at her feet. She stood and looked at it, then back out into the rain. Feeling suddenly lost without the cigarette in her hand, she reached into her bag and pulled out another. She hesitated for a moment, as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted it or not, and then, with a sigh, took it in her lips. She never knew what she wanted anymore, she felt a constant hunger that she didn’t know how to satisfy. She was sure it was for him, and being with him finally, without the hiding and the secrecy, would make it go away. With the lighter in her hand, she struck the flint until a flame flickered in the cold air, casting a warm light on her smooth and youthful face. The cigarette would distract her for the meantime, she thought. She took a long, deep drag, feeling the smoke enter her lungs, and then exit through her nostrils like jets of steam. She watched the smoke disperse in the air in front of her.

She shivered and stamped her feet. All of the excitement she had felt in the past days was evaporating, just like the smoke from her cigarette, and in that moment it simply felt like she was waiting at the bus stop. She thought of all of the times that she had stood in the very same spot, waiting for a bus to drive up and open its door to her, to come and carry her to the next place she needed to go, and all of the times the buses had brought her reluctantly back, tearing the landscape away from her as she watched from the window.

Just as she had done many times standing in that very spot, she looked down at her watch, pressing a button to illuminate its pink light. It was 22.01. He was only one minute late. “I’ll be there at ten,” he had said, “wait at the bus stop, and don’t let anyone see you.” She pulled her hood up and went through it again in her head, her thoughts moving slowly and solemnly through her mind, around in circles she could not break. This was the only way. “No turning back,” he had said. But there was something that hung in her mind, something tangled and unclear, she felt it there, pressing, wishing to be heard. Was it because he was older? Was it because she knew how it would look to other people? He was old enough to be her father, after all, and however grown up she felt, she was still at school. People would say it was wrong. But it didn’t feel wrong to her, so did that make it right? Those thoughts made it harder for her to be there, waiting, so she dismissed them, instead focusing on the darkness around her, on the things she could not see.

Under the light of the street lamp, she noticed the red lipstick ring around the cigarette as she drew it from her mouth. She had never needed to wear lipstick before, she had only done so because her friends did and because she knew her mother didn’t like it. But now she wore it for a different reason, she wore it for him. There was a reason beyond herself now, a reason for everything, for the lipstick, for the clothes she wore, the way she fixed her hair.

And she still remembered the time that she had not loved him, but it felt like remembering another person’s life, she was not the same person she had been then, she had crossed some sort of line, stepped out of the shadows, grown up, blooming like a flower beneath his light. She had so much feeling now, where before there had been only loneliness and boredom and fear, and her life before felt like it had been just one numb and empty bus ride after another, and the other parts - home, school, the restaurant where she worked - only filled up the time in between, like the rain outside the bus stop falling onto the pavement, filling in the cracks.

And just as she stood there, smiling at the rain, a silver car pulled up, engine throbbing. The window on the driver’s side slid down.

                “Ready for a road trip?” He said, the orange streetlight twinkling in his dark eyes, his face creasing as he smiled.