My best friend left New York on Thursday. She took a job in Chicago, a good one, the kind you don't say no to, and I helped her carry boxes down four flights in the Upper East Side and then I rode the 6 home alone.
We met three years ago at a sample sale in the Garment District, both reaching for the same discounted coat, and we've been reaching for the same things ever since. Same restaurants. Same terrible taste in men. Same instinct to text each other the second anything, good or bad, happened.
Nobody warns you about this part of adult friendship. When your best friend leaves NYC, it's not dramatic. There's no fight, no falling out. Just a suitcase and a hug that lasts too long and then you're standing on the platform at 68th Street watching your reflection in the train window.
The 6 felt enormous and empty even though it was packed. That's the thing about missing someone. It rearranges the space around you. Suddenly the seat beside me was a seat she'd sat in a hundred times, telling me about her day, about the guy who ghosted her, about her mother.
We promised the things you promise. Weekend flights. She'll come for my birthday. I'll be in Chicago by December. And I believe us, mostly. But I know the truth too, which is that a friendship that lived in the same city now has to live in phone screens, and something gets lost in the translation.
My best friend leaving New York taught me that this city is really just the people in it. The bridges and the bodegas are beautiful, but they're scaffolding. The people are the actual thing.
There's a Bollywood line my mother loves, about how some people leave footprints on your heart. Cheesy. True. Anyway.
I'll ride the 6 again tomorrow. It'll feel a little more normal. Then a little more. That's how it goes.
Call the friend who moved. Right now. Before it feels like too long.
Love,