Seatmate

Seatmate is the third entry in Cara Bastone's Love Lines series, first released as an Audible Original and later published in print. Gwen needs to be in New York City in five hours and ten minutes for a professional opportunity she cannot afford to miss, and the only option left is the second-to-last seat on a discount bus, across from the bathroom.

Then a man sits down beside her. What starts as small talk with a seatmate turns into a whole day of shared detours as the trip goes wrong in every way a bus trip can, and the two of them keep talking anyway.

It is a single-journey, conversation-driven romance — closer to a novella than a sprawling novel — built almost entirely out of two people getting to know each other in real time.