[ WP ] Make me envy a sudden chemistry between two strangers .

`` Fireflies.'' 
 
 Kelly turned. The man sat across from her, legs stretched across the aisle. `` Were you talking to me?'' she asked, knowing that he had to have been, or else he was talking to himself. The man smiled. 
 
 `` Yeah. It's just that you looked like you were dreaming of fireflies.'' 
 
 `` How can you tell that, just from a glance?'' asked Kelly, leaning forward and catching the scent of his cologne, like leather and pine, masking the subway stench of too many unmentionable things. 
 
 `` Ca n't imagine a girl like you dreaming of anything less than pure magic,'' he said with a lopsided grin. 
 
 `` That's some line,'' said Kelly. `` How often does it work?'' 
 
 `` I do n't know. Never seen a girl worth trying it on before.'' 
 
 Now it was Kelly's turn to smile. `` It was n't fireflies,'' she admitted. `` But I was sitting here dreaming. I do that a lot these days.'' 
 
 `` Kind of dream you'd be willing to share with a stranger?'' 
 
 Kelly paused and turned the thought over in her head. `` Yeah. I think so. In fact, I think it's one of those dreams I'd only be willing to share with a stranger.'' 
 
 `` That dangerous, huh?'' 
 
 `` Maybe.'' Kelly reoriented herself so that she was facing him fully. Her ankle brushed against the side of his calf, still stretched across the way. After an instinctual jump, she let it rest there, amused by the brief and impersonal - but still somehow too intimate - touch. `` See, I was dreaming about going off somewhere and leaving everything in the city behind. All the ex-boyfriends, the crappy job, the roommate, the friends... just letting them go. Taking off and finding someplace quiet where nobody knows my name.'' 
 
 `` Sounds lonely,'' said the man. 
 
 `` That's the point,'' said Kelly. `` I do n't think I've ever had the chance to really be lonely. And somehow that's the loneliest feeling in the world. I do n't even know what the voice inside my head sounds like. I hardly ever have the chance to think.'' 
 
 `` So where would you go, if you could go anywhere in the world?'' 
 
 Kelly dropped her head back, peering at his face through her lashes. `` I'd go to this little town I visited once, when I was growing up. My parents took me and my brother to Florida - road trip - but we stopped off in Georgia for the night. Little gingerbread farmhouses.'' 
 
 `` And it was summertime?'' he asked. 
 
 `` Yeah. Sweltering hot.'' 
 
 `` So I was right. You were dreaming about fireflies,'' he said. 
 
 Kelly furrowed her brows and tried to remember that hot summer night so many years earlier. It was only when he said it that she thought of the glowing yellow-green specks of light that had illuminated the darkness - of how she'd tried and tried to catch a firefly in her hand, but they'd always eluded her grasp. 
 
 The subway shuddered to a stop. The man stood, briefcase in hand. `` It was nice talking to you,'' he said as he made his way to the door. 
 
 Kelly smiled at him. He was already halfway across the platform when she rushed off the train, not caring that her own stop was still miles away and it was too late to find another. The man looked down at her as she slipped her arm under his. 
 
 `` Hi,'' he said. `` My name's Henry.'' 
 
 `` Kelly.'' 
 
 `` What're you doing, Kelly?'' he asked as he began to walk up the stairs with her arm twined in his. 
 
 Kelly looked up into his eyes, and inhaled the leather and pine scent she was certain she would never forget. `` Chasing fireflies,'' she said as they stepped into the city, surrounded by lights.
