There were twenty-one stops between his school and mine, and I knew them the way I knew the freckle beneath his left eye. He got on at Recto, I got on at Doroteo Jose, and by Pureza he had always saved me the spot by the window with the crack shaped like a river.
We never planned it. We just kept happening, the way rain keeps happening in July. He'd share one earphone and I'd take the left, and we'd watch the city slide by in orange evening light, the tin roofs, the drying laundry, the mango trees leaning over walls that weren't theirs.
One night the train stalled at Legarda. The lights hummed and dimmed. In the dark his hand found mine on the cold seat, and neither of us said anything, because to name it would be to end it. I counted the stops in my head so I would not count the beating in my chest. Nineteen. Twenty.
At Blumentritt he said, quietly, We're moving to Cebu. Papa's work. The train jolted forward as if it had been waiting for the worst thing to be said. I nodded at the window. The river-crack caught the light.
When? I asked.
Sunday.
Three stops left. I wanted to give him something to carry, a sentence he could keep in his pocket, but all I had was the earphone, still warm, still playing a song neither of us was listening to anymore.
At Tayuman he stood. He always stood at Tayuman. But this time he waited until the doors hissed open, then leaned down and pressed his forehead to mine, one second, the length of a station's mercy, and was gone into the crowd before I could learn the shape of goodbye.
I still ride the LRT. I still take the left earphone from no one. Twenty-one stops, and somewhere around Pureza, every single time, my heart forgets he isn't saving me the window.