Thunder had always scared her. It slammed itself against the large glass window of the apartment, screaming to be let in. She covered her ears with her hands and nestled further down into the sofa.
The wind was relentless.

Next to her apartment was a small train station and usually when she couldn’t sleep, like right now, she would look down on the people catching the last train back to the city. Sometimes, she would see a random person and find herself dreaming about what their life might be like. One night, when the sky was clear and soft pink clouds dawdled along the horizon, she saw an old man sat on a bench carrying a bouquet of yellow tulips, checking his watch every five minutes and tapping his leg impatiently on the ground.

She fell asleep thinking about who he was waiting for.

Occasionally, she would see a person getting off the train and secretly hope that they were there to see her. She would imagine them pressing the buzzer and calling her name, standing at the foot of the building, looking up at the great window, trying to catch a glimpse of her. This never happened of course. No one had ever visited her, apart from a young child who had gotten off the lift at the wrong floor.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go outside, but more like she had no one to go outside with. She was ashamed when she saw people being in love – skipping down the street, racing each other to the train station, laughing breathlessly as they went up the last flight of stairs. They were immune to every stare they received, looking at no one else apart from each other. It was ironic: she stayed in her apartment, never meeting anyone new, while other people explored the wondrous city together, making strangers their friends.

The clouds roared again.

She got up to pull the curtains shut, but it only made the storm decide to shriek even louder, and made the rain lash down like a drunk man pouring an entire bottle down himself carelessly. She gave up on sleeping and peered through the curtains.

There was a woman. She held an exasperated expression and a broken umbrella, with her phone in between her ear and shoulder. Suddenly, a man appeared next to her. He held the same expression, yet he was smirking and laughing like a badly behaved schoolboy.

Neither of them had noticed her. She wondered if they would care even if they did see her.

After twenty minutes, a black cab approached and the two  people got in, leaving her alone with her thoughts once again.

She returned to the sofa and the sky collapsed. The city was engulfed in grey as she sat there, staring into space, thinking about how that man had looked at that woman, and if anyone would ever look at her like that.