The Seat Opposite

The railway sleepers awoke to the rattling of the train arriving onto Platform One. The sounds of the engine whirring to a stop as the automatic doors opened to allow safe passage of its soon-to-be passengers. The last train of the night, leaving behind it the safety of his home.

Jude stood on board, with his polished shoes and cane in hand.

The cane wasn’t for show. His right knee liked to remind him of a youth poorly spent—decades of hauling amps up fire escapes, of late-night gigs in venues that paid more in free food than money. He adjusted his grip on the worn handle, waiting until the last person had boarded before moving down the aisle.

The middle carriage was nearly empty. Just as he’d hoped.

He chose a window seat near the back, facing forward, so he wouldn’t have to watch the tracks disappear behind him. The vinyl seat was cracked, but clean. Jude sank into it with the slow stiffness of someone who’d earned every creak in his bones.

He placed the cane upright between his knees, clasped both hands over the top, and sighed.

The train lurched forward, smooth and soft, like it knew not to disturb him too quickly. Outside, the city lights gave way to shadows, and Jude let the darkness take the window.

No one sat beside him.

He was glad.

People made small talk. They asked questions. Where are you headed? What do you do? Do you have family?

Jude had no patience for questions tonight.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. It had creases worn from years of being taken out, then put away again—always unread, always untouched.

A phone number.

Her phone number.

He stared at it as the wheels hummed beneath him, the tracks singing their low lullaby.

Then a voice broke the stillness.

“Long ride ahead?” said the man slipping into the seat opposite him.

Jude looked up.

The man looked... familiar. Younger. His eyes held something Jude hadn’t seen in his own reflection in years. A confidence of something wild and restless.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the man added, already settling in. “Didn’t like the look of the other rows.”

Jude said nothing.

There was something about the voice, something oddly familiar yet puzzling.

It sounded like his own, but thirty years earlier.

Jude blinked, slow and deliberate. The man opposite him leaned back casually, elbows splayed, like he belonged there. A scuff on his leather jacket, a fading coffee stain on his jeans, and that cocky tilt of the head. Jude knew all of it. Not just the look.

The feel of it.

This was no stranger.

It was him. Thirty years ago.

The version of himself that still smoked, still played gigs that ran past 2 A.M., still believed that time was something you could outrun.

“Rough day?” the younger man asked, winking at him with a knowing smirk.

Jude swallowed, throat dry. “Do I know you?”

The man chuckled, soft and sharp. “Not anymore. But you did.”

Silence opened between them like a tunnel.

Jude turned back toward the window, watching his own faint reflection blur into the night. “This is some kind of dream,” he muttered.

“Could be,” the man said. “Could be something else.”

Another stretch of silence. The train sped up now, gliding through the blackened outskirts of the city. Streetlights flickered past like distant stars, just out of reach.

“You were headed to Sydney once,” Jude said slowly. “Back then.”

The man grinned. “Back then, I was headed everywhere. Thought I had time for all of it.”

Jude shifted, uncomfortable. “Why now?”

“Because you’re almost out of track, and the nights almost over” the man replied simply.

Jude looked to him fully now, studying the younger face, so full of defiance and charm, but unscarred by consequence. “You came to lecture me?”

“I came to see you,” the younger Jude said. “And maybe… to ask why you stopped.”

Jude laughed, but it came out tired. “Stopped what? Music? Life? Talking to my daughter?”

“All of it,” the man said, gently now. “You disappeared, old man. First from yourself. Then from everyone else.”

The train rocked gently. Somewhere far off, a horn wailed into the dark.

“I didn’t disappear,” Jude said. “I got quiet. There’s a difference.”

The man looked at him, long and hard, then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something Jude hadn’t seen in years: a beat-up cassette tape, labeled in fading black ink. To My Daughter. Not Yet.

Jude’s breath caught.

“You recorded it,” the younger man said. “But you never sent it.”

Jude closed his eyes.

“She was ten,” he said. “And I couldn’t find the words.”

“You had the words,” the man said, placing the tape on Jude's lap. “You just didn’t think you deserved to say them.”

The train sped on, carving through the night.

And Jude, for the first time in years, felt something give way in his chest—not pain, exactly. Just the slow, cracking weight of something long buried and finally seen.

Jude stared at the tape.

So small. So fragile. A relic from a version of himself that had dared to believe redemption was just a postage stamp away.

“I don’t even know if the number still works,” he said, voice low, almost to himself.

“You don’t know if she’ll answer either,” his younger self replied. “You’ve been hiding behind that maybe for over a decade.”

Jude didn’t respond.

The train rattled through a curve. Overhead, a dull speaker crackled: “Next stop, Sydney. Arrival at 3:07 A.M.” A few seats up, a couple stirred in their sleep. The hum of the engine masked the sound of guilt that had been pulsing in Jude’s ears for years.

“You think it’s too late?” the younger man asked.

Jude pressed his knuckles against his mouth. “I know it might be.”

“And you’re prepared for that?”

“No.” He paused. “But I’ve carried silence longer than I was meant to. Maybe that’s the only thing worse.”

The younger version leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes dark and steady. “Do you remember the night you left her recital early?”

Jude nodded once. The memory was bone-deep. His daughter, Anna - ten years old, playing a song she’d written for him. He had told her he had a gig. The truth was—he couldn’t sit there and listen. Not after quitting music himself. It felt like watching someone inherit something he’d already failed.

“She waited by the door for an hour,” the man said softly. “Still holding the bouquet she bought you.”

Jude felt the tears threaten. Not dramatic, not cinematic. Just pressure; constant, familiar. He never returned after that night. It was all too real and too hard.

“She used to draw little treble clefs on the notes she left me,” Jude said. “When she still called me Dad.”

The man smiled sadly. “She might still.”

They sat in silence again. Jude looked at the man sitting across from him.

“You don’t get to rewrite the story,” the younger Jude said, “but you still get to write the next chapter.”

Jude stared ahead.

Then reached into his coat pocket.

He unfolded the paper.

The same creases, the same faded ink. The number he had dialed, once, but never called.

He pulled out his phone. His hands trembled, but not from age.

He hovered over the screen. Then tapped the number.

It rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

His throat tightened.

Four times. Then...

“Hello?” Her voice.

Adult now. Hesitant. The same pitch, but lower. Steadier. A stranger’s voice wrapped in someone he once knew.

Jude swallowed.

“It’s me,” he said. “It’s… your father.”

Silence.

Then a sharp breath. “Jude?”

Not Dad.

He nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “I know I don’t deserve this call. I just...” He looked down at the cassette. “I never sent the words I wanted to say. But I’m on a train, and I thought… maybe I could start with ‘I’m sorry.’”

A pause. Not cold. Not warm. Just real.

He waited.

He looked up – the younger version of himself began to vanish before his eyes.

Then her voice came, softer now.

“I’m listening, Dad”