Riya moved to Los Angeles on Monday. She was the first real friend I made in this city, and now she is three time zones and one entire coast away.
We said goodbye at the Bedford Avenue L stop, which felt correct, because that station is where our whole friendship happened. Late nights spilling off the platform, sharing headphones, splitting a dosa at that place that closed and broke both our hearts.
Nobody warns you about this part of your twenties. The friend who moves away. The way a city can feel full of people and suddenly missing exactly one.
We hugged for too long by the turnstiles. A guy with a keyboard strapped to his back had to walk around us. She cried. I told her I was not going to cry and then I cried, which is my entire personality in one sentence.
The thing about the friend who moves away is that you do not lose them all at once. You lose them slowly. First the physical presence. Then the spontaneous plans. Then, if you are not careful, the daily texts thin out until the group chat is just links nobody responds to.
I am trying not to be careful. I am trying to fight for it.
We already have a standing video call. Sunday mornings her time, Sunday afternoons mine, which is somehow the same coffee-in-hand feeling we always had.
There is a Hindi word my mother uses, apnapan, that closeness of belonging to each other. Riya was my apnapan in a city of eight million strangers. That does not just evaporate because she moved for a better job and better weather and, honestly, better rent.
I rode the L back to my apartment alone and the train felt enormous. Every station we ever laughed at scrolling past the window.
The friend who moves away teaches you that love is not proximity. I know that intellectually. My whole family lives an ocean from me and I love them ferociously.
But the heart is slow to learn what the head already knows.
We will be fine. Different shape, same love. She already texted me a photo of a palm tree with the caption you would hate it here, meaning she wishes I was there.
I would hate it there. I would go anyway.
Come back and split a dosa with me. I'll find us a new place.
Love,