He didn't text back. And instead of doing something dignified, I walked the entire Williamsburg Bridge.
Started at Delancey on the LES, right where the J train ducks underground, and walked all the way over to the Brooklyn side as the sky went that bruised pink it does in August.
Here's the embarrassing part. It wasn't even a real thing. Three dates. One good kiss outside a wine bar on Orchard Street. Enough to build an entire Karan Johar wedding sequence in my head, obviously, because I am my mother's daughter and we do not do things by halves.
I kept checking my phone on the bridge. The little grey nothing. He was reading it. He just wasn't answering it. Which is somehow worse. Being liked almost enough is its own specific ache.
The thing about the Williamsburg Bridge is it makes you keep going. There's no dramatic pause. You're up there with the runners and the cyclists yelling at you and the F train screaming past inches away, and you cannot cinematically collapse. You just have to walk it out.
So I did. I thought about how I do this — decide a person is a plot before they've even agreed to be in the story. How I mistook potential for promise again.
DDLJ ruined a generation of us, honestly. We're all standing at the metaphorical train reaching out our hands and half these men are Amrish Puri saying no.
By the Brooklyn side my feet hurt and I'd stopped checking. Got a lassi at a place near Marcy and sat on a stoop and felt almost okay.
He still hasn't texted. I've decided that's information, not injury.
The Williamsburg Bridge holds a lot of quiet heartbreaks. I added mine and kept walking.
You're allowed to want to be chosen out loud.
Love,