Tess loved kids the way everyone loves kids: until they’re crying in a closed space you can’t escape.

Parents, on the other hand, were not a species she had any love for. She supposed that some parents truly wanted the full-time, life-long commitment, though she had yet to meet such unicorns herself.

She also understood that to have a kid – singular – one day, she would have to become one of these parent types for which she had no love. But that was a bridge to cross upon arrival.

Tess was not in one of the aforementioned closed spaces you can’t escape. This was no plane, train, or automobile: just a sidewalk. A simple city street surrounded by bushes and alleys and buildings.

The mom and her kid could have gone anywhere. And yet, they seemed to be going in the same direction that Tess was. She would have complained that they were following her, but she was the one walking behind them. They kept taking the same turns as her, just five paces ahead of her.

It was not an area with which she was familiar and she had the sense of direction of a compass in a magnetic field, so she couldn’t take an alternate route. Instead, she was stuck behind what was either a deaf woman or the world’s worst mother and a little girl who Tess guessed to be about five years old.

The little girl’s blonde pigtails stuck straight out the sides of her head, bouncing with every step of her mini winter boots. Her pink, puffy coat sparkled with purple rhinestones, complete with fuzzy lining along the edge of the hood that hung a couple feet from Tess. And despite the open air through which they trudged, accidentally one after the other, the little girls’ screams were suffocating.

To one extent, it was impressive. How can someone so little make so much noise for so many consecutive blocks? It was a talent. Anywhere from glass shattering shrieks to low sobs, it was practically an orchestra of tears and air jammed through lungs and vocal cords that weren’t even fully formed.

When Tess first walked out of the building and behind them in the crowd, she almost scooped up the crying kid as the child appeared to be wandering the streets, crying and alone. But after a few moments, Tess realized that the woman walking beside the little girl was her guardian, despite the fact that she at no point looked at or touched the child. The little girl would look up at her every few moments. She turned where the woman turned, but a six inch buffer of impenetrable space remained between them at all times.

Usually, Tess preferred to stroll, not power-walk. But after the first two blocks behind the screaming child and her assumed-mother, who were also strolling, Tess decided this might be a good day to pick up the pace. She tried to pass them on several occasions over the course of the following three blocks, but between construction, traffic lights, and general overpopulation, she was unable to find her way around them.

Accepting her fate for the remaining five blocks to the train, Tess studied the creature before her. The woman’s long winter jacket had been sewn up in a few places in the shoulder and her purse strap was worn down and faded. Yet her hair looked freshly styled and her heels were unmistakably Louboutin’s.

Simultaneously curious and confused, Tess slowed from a stroll to a saunter, attempting to put some sort of space between her and the unrelenting cries that were bound to cause a migraine.

At seven blocks, the crying stopped for a moment. The little girl tripped – which, impressively, didn’t interrupt the screaming at all. It did, however, catapult her into her mother’s ironed black slacks, before she caught herself and regained her footing.

Upon impact is when the crying, as well as both sets of footsteps, stopped cold. The mother’s head of blonde balayage spun in response, tilting to examine the point of contact. As Pigtails turned to look up at her mother, Tess saw for the first time the child’s red face, dripping with snot and tears. The mother’s eyes clicked from her pants to her daughter’s face. The child’s eyes widened in anticipation. No words were spoken, but the mother’s look was louder than the child’s screams.

It all happened in a matter of seconds, maybe not even that. Tess, at her saunter, didn’t even reach them before the mother took off again, not caring to check that the child was following her. Pigtails did not proceed immediately, taking up her crying again before bumbling forward once more on exhausted feet.

As the child continued, now following a foot behind her mother, her crying reached a new pitch and volume that put the past eight blocks to shame. As the screams reached their crescendo, the mother spun on her Louboutin’s with rage in her eyes. Her arms remained at her sides, but the childs’ did not. As soon as the the mother’s manicured face came into view, Pigtails stopped in her tracks, gasped, and raised her arms up in front of her face to protect herself.

The mother saw the child’s reaction, then glanced up at Tess, who inadvertently locked eyes with her. Straightening her posture, the mother took a single stride towards the child, grabbing her arm away from her face, and moving her into a quicker pace.

They finally put some distance between themselves and Tess, just as Tess wondered if she should stick around to be a witness.

Tess did not make a decision before they were out of sight, at which point there was no longer anything to decide. They were gone. There was nothing to be done.

Enjoying the returning apathy and rumble of the crowd, Tess let her mind wander back to Chance, back to his apartment she had just inhabited for 72 hours, back to the promise of the start of something great. By the end of these past 72 hours, she had all the answers she needed from him.

He brought everything she wanted to the table. He didn’t coddle her and likewise didn’t expect her to take care of him. He was independent and career driven, requiring the same of any partner. He was a debater, like she was, always inclined to argue the other side: the devil’s advocate.

Law school was so fitting for him. Five years as a teacher had been good for him, but he was tired of feeling helpless in a broken system. Now, he wanted to fix the system. Tess was pretty sure that even law wouldn’t help with that, but she hadn’t had the guts to bring it up yet.

Like she, he maybe wanted to have one kid some day. He talked about previous students with the same adoration that he reserved for his nieces and nephews. But it was one thing to love someone else’s kids and something entirely else to create your own pack.

Despite their mutually unparalleled love of the mountains, they both wanted to live in the city. They wanted the extremes: packed strangers you couldn’t escape with bouts of reprieve in nature’s quiet solitude. The mountains were everything to them. It was where they met and one day where Tess would accept Chance’s proposal. They hiked, they skied, they cycled. At every opportunity, they escaped to the mountains.

Except this weekend. This weekend, Tess had needed to get her answers. Answers to whether or not she was wasting her time or if they should start getting serious. She would rather be alone than with the wrong partner, but she was still relieved that he had provided all the right answers during their stay-cation in his tiny little apartment.

Her least favorite thing about his apartment was the location. Ten blocks from the nearest train, and the platform was always dark and empty. Tess’ love of open space specifically did not apply to the city where she preferred to be surrounded by sickening numbers of strangers. The train stop was too quiet, too open.

She hadn’t even been able to spot security cameras there. This could have been because there wasn’t enough traffic or crime to necessitate them. It could have also been because people kept taking them down in order to get away with psychotic, inhumane murder that involved collecting victims’ hair and finger nails. Despite the part of Tess’ brain that feared the latter every time she arrived at the platform, she pushed herself to believe it was simply an indication of safe environs.

As she descended the stairs to the platform on her way home from such a momentous weekend, she was relieved to see a few people there – until she realized who they were. The mother sat hunched over her phone while Pigtails played hopscotch with the yellow cautionary line immediately next to the tracks.

Tess was nervous that the mom would think she was following them. She didn’t care about what the mom might think of her and she wasn’t scared of someone who wouldn’t be able to run after her in four inch heels. She was, however, mildly worried that any inferred concern from a stranger might be taken out on Pigtails later and thanks to the unintentional eye contact a few blocks prior, the mom would be likely to recognize Tess here on the platform.

Tess first considered leaning against the stairs, at the point farthest from them. Perhaps distance would signal to the mom that Tess intended to keep to her own business.

Then she thought staying so far away might look suspicious, like she was trying too hard to not be noticed. Also not wanting to get too close and make the mom feel intruded upon, Tess opted for a spot two benches in, easily visible, but leaving a respectable distance for each party to live their own life. She approached clumsily, making her presence known by dropping her bag on the bench with a thud and squeaking her Vans a few times in hopes that the mom wouldn’t think she was trying to sneak up on them.

Once she had settled into her bird poop- and gum-free spot, it occurred to Tess that the child was no longer crying. Instead, the girl was sending her pigtails bopping with every hop in front of and behind the yellow line.

The yellow line was intended as a safety measure: passengers were not intended to get closer to the tracks than that. Tess grew a little nervous watching Pigtails jump back and forth over the line, even though no trains were around. She wondered if Mom even knew that was happening.

Tess dared a glance at the mother. Completely engrossed in her phone, the woman was unfazed by her daughter’s actions. The woman’s hair had fallen to the side of her face, blocking her view of Tess. Taking advantage of her invisibility, Tess studied her a little longer than she might have otherwise.

It was while Tess was distracted, wondering about yet another parent who would fuel her lack of love for the entire species, that it happened: movement in Tess’ peripheral vision that drew her gaze back toward the tracks, to where Pigtails had been just a moment before and no longer was.

Trying not to seem too invested in the child, Tess looked subtly left and right without spinning in circles and checking under the bench like she wanted to. She only needed to look for about a half second before the all-too-known screaming started up again. And it was coming from the tracks.

…to be continued…