“What if we lose each other?” I asked. It was the question I had been editing into more respectable forms for years, and saying it plainly made me feel younger than I wanted to. Ben didn’t reassure me that everything would be fine, didn’t offer an example designed to prove we were safe. “Then it hurts,” he said, “but keeping one foot outside won’t guarantee you a way back to the friendship you had before.”
At 2:30, I texted Maya and asked whether I could see her that evening. She replied five minutes later: after seven, at the bakery. I spent the rest of the afternoon resisting the urge to write a speech that would make everything sound cleaner than it was. She didn’t need a perfectly organized explanation of my behavior; she needed to know whether I understood what it had asked of her.
When I entered North and Pine at 7:10, the front lights were dim and the chairs were upside down on the tables. Maya stood behind the counter rolling dough for the following morning, her hair in a loose knot and flour caught against the front of her apron. There was nothing staged or romantic about the scene, which made it feel more important. This was her actual life, the place where she worked when she was tired, and she had agreed to let me come into it again.
