as far as goodbyes go

The empty bed was made with a downy duvet atop a sheet-stripped mattress. The only evidence that someone was ever here was either packed away in my myriad of suitcases or seesawing back and forth in a stew of water and suds in the laundry machine. Aside from the sheetless mattress, the guest room looked exactly as it did a month ago-- walls as white as fresh snow, marred only by a painting of an orchid opposite the door. A cracking wooden bedpost. A handkerchief, yellowed with age, stuffed carelessly in the nightstand on top of the worn bible tucked away in the drawer. 

He stood in the doorframe behind me and said nothing but shifted antsily back and forth on his feet. 

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” I said, finally. Silence. A long pause was my only response. And then.

“You know you can stay as long as you’d like,” an invitation, a silent plea from a child to stay, to not leave like everyone else. But the bruises on my face were faded and gone, and my bank account replenished by apologetic relatives, and so, there is no way I could justify my stay any longer. 

“I appreciate it,” I said, sincerely, because I did-- I’ll probably never be able to repay him for his unconditional kindness; I came knocking on his door the first time we’d spoken in five years. I was bruised and battered from the fading remnants of a trainwreck ending of a marriage, and he let me stay as long as I needed, no questions asked.

 “But I have to go,” Because I did. Because all I did was take, take, take from him, and even if he let me, that didn't make it right and it didn't make it okay. 

His brows furrowed slightly over his eyes in concern, “Are you sure you’re ready to, though?” The question was heavy in the mid-morning air.

I pretended not to register the double meaning behind his words; a baby bird wavering on the edge of a nest above a long drop. “I have everything, I’m sure. If I left anything behind, feel free to throw it out,” I joked. 

He cracked the faintest of smiles. “You know I wouldn’t,”

I looked down. There it is, the confession that he didn’t need to say because I already knew it from the hot coffee he brewed and never drank, or my favorite pizza, dripping with grease, that he bought because he was just ‘in the area’, though he’d been on the other side of town. And with it all, the faint wistfulness in his mannerisms of knowing his feelings were unrequited-- it lingered in reassuring smiles he gave me when I needed them, the quiet acceptance that all we could ever be was friends. 

I looked down at my mismatched socks on the floor. “Yeah, I know,” 

He nodded, not dismayed, nor surprised. “I made coffee-- have some before you go,” He cracked a grin. “We both know I’m never going to drink it,” 

The coffee sloshed across the edge of the cup when I poured it. It stained the rim of the cup a glistening faded brown and trickled down the sides, onto the counter. 

“Sorry,” I said. 

He shrugged. “It’s fine. Anyways, do you have any idea where you’re going next?” I thought it over. I loved my city-- the streaks of oil across the sidewalks when it rained, the bodegas across every corner- there was never a boring day in it. But though the peaks of the skyscrapers and the glittering neon lights stretched taller and further than I could ever reach, I couldn’t help but feel like I had outgrown it. 

“Out,” I said, deciding as I said it. “I’m leaving the city. For good,” 

“Your whole life is here though-- do you have money? Where are you going to go?” His brow furrowed. “Look, I know you want to reinvent yourself after what happened, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw away your whole life,” I thought back to the apartment where I’d grown up-- the city where I’d first learned to ride a bike, fallen in love, and fallen down-- jostled by other people on busy sidewalks. Here was the city where I’d scraped countless knees and elbows on the asphalt skateboarding, spent nights scrounging for change in crumb-coated pockets to buy the excess ice cream from the convenience store, eating as I walked, condensation coating and cooling my fingers. This was my city. I’d laughed and cried and when I’d been angry and raging at the world, New York had listened to me and kept my secrets safe within the walls of its monolithic buildings. It was a library where every person was a story. 

But there was no more to do, nothing left for me-- the convenience store had closed, the late-night walks were no longer a place of comfort for me. I didn’t skate anymore and there was no one I wanted to fall in love with again. 

“My whole life is here so far, yes, but I don’t think this is quite the right place for the rest of it,” I set the coffee cup down, though I’d hardly drank from it. It reflected the light above the kitchen island like the moon stewing in its ink-black sky.

“Where will you go?” He asked. I dragged my suitcases to the front door while I thought, careful not to scratch the wooden floor. He swung the door open while he waited for me to respond and I inhaled the smell of the city-- cigarette smoke and frying meat from the food truck by the corner, the hustle and bustle of thousands of people; a thousand different perfumes and damp necks behind heavy scarves, sweaty hands in pockets, breath sweet from food or bitter from alcohol. There was a dark stain by the entrance to his flat, I noticed absently-- blood or wine, or something else. 

“I don’t know where I’ll go,” I said honestly. A cab pulled up to the curb. He hefted one of my suitcases up with a grunt, and I tugged at the other one, wrenching it free from the doorway. It scraped against the pavement as it hit the sidewalk.

“But I’ll never forget that I was here,” I leaned over on impulse and kissed him on the cheek. His skin was rough with faint stubble, faintly scented of aftershave. 

When I was tucked away in the cab, and watching the buildings recede, swallowed by the distance, I let the morning replay in my mind. Overall, as far as goodbyes go, I’d had worse ones.