The fluorescent lights flickered overhead as Emma clutched her worn copy of "Les Misérables" closer to her chest, swaying with the motion of the subway car. Her morning commute was usually a blur of faceless passengers, but today was different. As the train lurched to a stop, someone stumbled into her, sending her book clattering to the floor.

"Je suis désolé," a deep voice apologized in perfect French. Emma looked up to find herself staring into warm brown eyes belonging to a tall man with slightly disheveled dark hair. He was already bending down to retrieve her book, and she noticed his own copy of "Madame Bovary" tucked under his arm.

"You speak French?" Emma asked, accepting her book back with a smile. The stranger, who introduced himself as Thomas, grinned and gestured to an empty seat beside him.

"I studied in Paris for a year," he explained as they sat down. "I see you're a Hugo fan?" His eyes sparkled with genuine interest, something Emma rarely encountered in her daily subway adventures.

For the next twenty minutes, they lost themselves in animated discussion about French literature, barely noticing the stops passing by. Emma almost missed her station, jumping up at the last second. "This is me," she said reluctantly.

"Wait," Thomas called out as she stepped onto the platform. "Would you like to continue this conversation over coffee? I know a little café that could almost be in Paris."

Emma hesitated for just a moment before nodding. "Tomorrow? Same train?"

Over the next few weeks, their morning literary discussions became the highlight of Emma's day. They graduated from subway conversations to evening walks through the city, discovering they shared more than just a love of French novels. Thomas was a literature professor at the local university, while Emma worked as a translator.

Their first kiss happened outside that little café he'd mentioned, the spring rain falling softly around them. It felt like a scene from one of their beloved novels, perfect in its simplicity and timing.

"You know," Thomas said one evening as they strolled through the park, "I almost took a different train that morning. But something made me run late, and I caught your train instead."

Emma squeezed his hand. "Maybe Hugo himself was playing matchmaker," she teased, but they both knew that sometimes the best stories were the ones that life wrote for you, when you least expected them.

Six months later, Thomas proposed in that same subway car where they'd first met, pulling out a vintage French edition of "Les Misérables" with a ring nestled inside. Emma's "Oui" echoed through the car, followed by applause from smiling strangers who had no idea they were witnessing the final chapter of a romance that began with a stumble and a fallen book on a ordinary morning commute.