Two years ago I had a giant, embarrassing, heart-in-throat crush on a boy named Dev. This week we split a masala dosa on the Lower East Side and I realized I'd gotten something far better than what I wanted back then.
The friendship that outlived the crush is, quietly, the great love story of my New York life. And nobody warns you those exist.
We met at a rooftop thing in the LES in my first month here, both of us clutching drinks we didn't want, both of us the only brown people in the room doing that eye-contact thing that means "oh thank god, another one." I fell hard and fast. He was funny and kind and he pronounced my name correctly on the first try, which, if you know, you know.
It never happened romantically. There was a moment, a conversation, a gentle mutual understanding that we were better as this. I cried a tiny bit in a bathroom on Ludlow Street. Then I moved on.
And here's what nobody tells you: the friendship that outlived the crush is deeper than the crush ever could have been. Because the wanting is gone. There's nothing to perform. He's seen me ugly-cry over a work rejection and I've watched him bomb a first date and text me from the bathroom mid-disaster.
Over dosas at this little place on the LES that does proper South Indian food, we talked about home. His family's from Kerala, mine's Gujarati, and somehow in this enormous cold city we became each other's little piece of the subcontinent.
There's a kind of love that isn't romantic and isn't family and doesn't have a Bollywood song written about it, and it might be the truest kind. The friend who is just there. Who remembers you take extra sambar. Who lets your name sound right in his mouth.
I walked to the F train after, full of dosa and something warmer than that.
The crush was a door. The friendship was the whole house.
Love,