Ananya is moving to Chicago. She told me over dinner on Tuesday and I have been quietly falling apart ever since.
We met at a rooftop thing three years ago, both of us clutching drinks we didn't want, both of us the only brown girls in the room. She said, "you look as bored as I feel," and that was it. Friendship, sealed.
We did our goodbye dinner at a tiny place on 1st Avenue in the East Village, the kind with eight tables and a waiter who remembers you. We ordered too much. We always order too much. It's our love language.
She got a promotion. A real one, the kind you don't say no to. I told her I was proud, and I meant it with my whole chest, and I also wanted to lie down on the floor of the restaurant and refuse to let her leave.
The thing about a best friend in New York is they become your family here. When your actual family is on the other side of the planet, your friends are the ones who know how you take your chai and which subway delays make you cry. Ananya is that for me. Was. Is. I don't know the tense yet.
Afterward I took the 6 train home from Astor Place, and the ride uptown was the loneliest it's ever felt. Same train I take every week. Suddenly enormous and empty even though it was packed.
I thought about all the goodbyes I've collected since leaving Ahmedabad. You'd think you'd get better at them. You don't. You just get more of them.
But somewhere around 59th Street I remembered something my Nani used to say — that real people don't leave you, they just stand somewhere new. Chicago isn't Mars. There are flights. There are 2am voice notes.
The friend who moved away is still my friend. The 6 train home just has to teach me a new kind of quiet.
Love doesn't need the same zip code to stay real.
Love,