The B train comes up out of the tunnel and onto the Manhattan Bridge and for about ninety seconds you get the whole city and the river all at once.
Riya and I were on it together this week, riding into the city, and I realized somewhere over the water that I had nothing to say to her. Not in a cruel way. In a sad way.
We used to talk over each other. First year in New York, both of us broke, splitting a $9 dosa in Curry Hill like it was a state dinner. She knew every version of me.
And now we sit on the B over the Manhattan Bridge and I catch us both looking at our phones and I don't know when that happened.
Growing apart in your twenties is a strange grief because nobody died and nobody did anything wrong. You just each turned slightly, like two boats, and the gap widened without a single argument.
I wanted to say, I miss us. I wanted to say, are we okay, or are we just polite now. The city was glittering out the window like the closing shot of some Karan Johar film and I said none of it.
I said, "This bridge view never gets old." She said, "Never." And we went back to our phones.
Maybe some friendships are seasons and not lifetimes and that's allowed. Maybe I'm supposed to let her be someone I loved during a specific chapter, over the Manhattan Bridge, when we were both new here and scared.
I hugged her at Broadway-Lafayette longer than usual. She didn't ask why.
Some goodbyes happen slowly, in the middle of a sentence about a view.
Love,