To My Best Friend with the Palindrome Name

You were fifteen minutes late to our first date. I remember standing near the German Christmas festival, book in hand, waiting for you. You wore a green coat, standing nervously between the crepes and the Salvation Army volunteers. I opened my arms to hug you hello, and you hesitated before leaning in sideways.

I asked if you wanted to try the spiced wine but you were allergic. I suggested beer but you laughed and said it was too early. We sipped on hot chocolate out of ceramic snowman mugs as we walked around the plaza, listening to Ella Fitzgerald and the bells of the Salvation Army. We sat side by side as you told me about nursing: the twelve-hour shifts, the elderly patients who snuck cigarettes in the bathroom, the bloated doctors who treated their nurses like waitresses.

You never felt like a stranger. There was a familiarity to you, to the features in your face, the way your cheekbones arched when you smiled, and the way your eyes shone when you laughed. When you spoke about medicine your words were deliberate and eloquent. You reminded me of my father: a cerebral alpha who felt he had to conceal his intelligence. As the sun began to set you asked if I wanted to walk through Millennium Park with you. We soon found ourselves at a picnic table, watching couples ice skate past us along the skating ribbon. If you had brought along socks we might have ice skated, but I was thankful you had forgotten because I wouldn't have traded that conversation for the world.

You talked about your family in New Hampshire: your Colombian father, now little more than a memory of cooked plantains. Your mother, whom you'd called a terrible mother, was sick with Lupus. You called your brother a little bastard and I didn't probe further. But your eyes lit up when you talked about your grandfather, the Republican State Representative. You flashed a perfect smile with imperfect teeth. He was the man who had stepped up. The man who raised you. The man who stayed.

As the night got colder, we decided to get dinner. I noticed your light coat and put my arm around you as we walked, joking that I was doing it for myself — that I was cold. You leaned against me and we walked shoulder to shoulder, awkwardly, before breaking apart.

We sat down at a café and ordered sandwiches and I told you about Katie, my girlfriend of nearly six years. I wanted to tell you everything: that I had lost my virginity to her when I was nineteen; that we had dated through college; that, three months into our new life in Chicago, into our twelve-month lease, she had left me for Chad, her boss, a forty-five-year-old with canines filed into vampire fangs. I wanted to tell you that I had no idea what I was doing, that I only knew how to be a boyfriend to one girl. That I was, essentially, a virgin one girlfriend removed.

I hadn't dated in six years, I wanted to tell you. The only reason I was on a dating app was because I had no clue how to meet women.

"Writer from Argentina," my profile read, a picture of my amateur boxing debut as the default. "Occasionally gets punched in the face."

As we talked I felt nineteen again, confused and excited, terrified I might scare you away with an inexplicably nice apartment or a King-sized bed with girly bedding or any other remnants of the past that haunted the apartment I'd once shared with Katie. I wanted to tell you everything because I didn't want to hide anything or lie to you. But I couldn't. The words clung bitterly to the threshold of my lips.

The bookstore next to my apartment was open for another hour. I held the door open, letting out a cyclist before letting you inside. We stayed until a frail old lady kicked us out, browsing every inch of the aisles. You were the first girl I met who could spend as much time in a bookstore as me. I showed you the first pages of Brooklyn and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. You shoved your favorite novel in my face: This is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz.

You asked if I liked poetry and I showed you "The Sleeper in the Valley" by Rimbaud. You showed me your favorite, a poem by Warsan Shire titled "For Women Who Are Difficult to Love."

I loved that you loved books. I told you that I didn't think I could be with someone who didn't. You said that you loved that I carried a book in my pocket. You confessed that you had told your college roommate that your perfect man would carry a book in his pocket.

I bought a memoir by Haruki Murakami as we exited. I kept the receipt as a bookmark for months, telling myself that I would want to remember the date. And for the first time in six weeks — for the first time in six years — I found my mind absent of Katie.

I fought for my relationship. Even as things became sexless and platonic I showered Katie with love, trying to reclaim the life we'd had those first years, before we had become complacent. I cooked homemade pasta. I massaged her back after work. I drove out to the country to watch her equestrian lessons and take pictures. We moved into an apartment together and invested in expensive furniture. I bought her earrings and brought flowers home spontaneously. We adopted a couple of kittens even though I'd always hated cats. Even as the romance died, I still loved her. Katie had been the first person to encourage me to pursue writing, the first to say she loved my voice. She had been my first reader, my editor, and my best friend.

I could sense Katie distancing herself in those last weeks. I tried to mend the irreparable cracks with a surprise. I bought boxes of her favorite cereal and bags of chocolate and set up a diorama in the living room with flowers and a love note. I waited for her to come home from happy hour with her coworkers, imagining the look of surprise on her face.

As eight o'clock rolled around, I began to worry. At eleven o'clock, the cats began to cry at the bedroom door for her. At one, I fell asleep in the rocking chair, lights on, thinking I would find her in the bed when I opened my eyes. I woke up at five AM to a text message. She was staying the night at Chad's.

The following morning, as the cats purred and rubbed against her legs, Katie and I had our first real fight. For the first time in six years I yelled at her, bringing her to tears of resignation. We were over, she said. We had been over for a long time. Things were comfortable, she said, but she was unhappy. She promised to move out by the end of the month.

One week later, Chad came over in his Kia to help her move. I sat there silently, watching them carry out boxes of books and clothes. When they took the cats, I began to cry and I hid in the bedroom, burying my face in the pillows. I woke an hour later to the sound of glass shattering in the kitchen. I walked out of the bedroom and saw Katie holding a broom, standing next to a plastic cart with dishes. She walked over and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing me close.

I'm sorry, she said. I knew she didn't mean the broken glass.

Don't be. It's not your fault.

You should call someone tonight.

Yeah, maybe.

I hugged her tight and rested my chin against her strawberry-blonde hair, breathing her in, the familiar scent that had become such a fixture in my life. My eyes welled up with tears and I tried to look away, to hide my face. She looked up at me and kissed me on the cheek. And then the lips. Twice.

Bye, she said.

Bye.

I kissed you after our second date on the steps of your apartment. You walked two steps ahead of me, turning around so we could face each other at eye-level. I asked for a real hug and you threw your arms around my neck. We broke apart and I looked into your eyes. I knew I had to go for the first kiss, but I was paralyzed by fear.

You can kiss me, you said, laughing. And I did, over and over. And I remember feeling your smile pressed against my lips, your cold glasses pressed against my cheeks.

I could tell it wasn't easy for you to break my heart. You had to work up the courage after a few beers. We walked along the sidewalk, across from the bookstore where we'd ended our first date, when you asked how I felt about our friendship.

I asked, jokingly, if you were breaking up with me.

That was impossible, you said, because we weren't in a relationship. You asked how I felt about that, saying it was okay if I didn't want to be friends.

You said you really liked me. You said you wanted to be my friend, even if I didn't want to be yours. You said our first date had been so perfect that you almost didn't call me — wanting to let the memory of that date stand forever.

I couldn't understand why you had ended things, and even less why you insisted on keeping me around. But I knew I couldn't leave — I was drawn to you as if by magnetic connection. I knew, somehow, that you were meant to be in my life. But I didn't know what role you were meant to play yet.

You visited a bookstore in New York called The Strand. It was four stories tall and you said I would have loved it, that you could have spent your entire weekend there. You sent a picture of a coffee mug with a quote by John Waters: If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em.

As you walked around New York I waited in Chicago trying to convince myself that I wasn't in love with you, that those longing aches to see your face and hear your laugh were nothing. It was geography, I told myself, I had only known you for three months.

I opened Facebook and a picture of you appeared at the top of my newsfeed. You were in Times Square standing next to some guy whose murder I suddenly found myself plotting. He looked in his thirties and wore a mismatched, used car salesman suit. His thinning hair and patchy goatee gave him a benevolent child pornographer look. The knot in his tie was unforgivably crooked, without trace of a dimple. I paced around the apartment cursing this stranger's name and everything he stood for. He was older. He was employed. He lived in New York. I kicked the soccer ball across my living room.

How could you pick him over me? I thought. That loser. I was better — surely I was!

I needed to find more pictures. I needed to know more about him. I needed to find something I was better than him at.

Then I saw the name of the album: Cousins 1994 – 2016.

You took my blood pressure almost as a joke, after telling me about your own high blood pressure scares. You were afraid of a possible tumor on your adrenal glands. The doctor required you to pee in a jar and keep it refrigerated and you worried that your roommates might drink it. I laughed along with you but I was terrified. When I mentioned that I'd been told I had high blood pressure too, you darted across the room, grabbed a blood pressure monitor, and wrapped it around my wrist with your delicate fingers. You told me to uncross my legs and put my feet flat on the ground. I told you it would be high, that I was afraid of white lab coats. You said to relax, that it was okay — I was only at your place. I wondered if you knew, then, that my blood pressure was so high for that very reason.

I was in the gym that Monday when you told me you were going to the Emergency Room. You were having trouble breathing, your chest felt heavy, your blood pressure was high. You sent me a message saying you were freaking out and your phone was about to die.

I didn't rush over immediately. That would have been the heroic thing to do, but I didn't even know which hospital to visit. I was afraid to call and drain your battery. I ran home and paced around the apartment for an hour, asking myself whether you wanted me there or not before ultimately deciding to go. I couldn't not go. My best friend was in the ER — I had to be in the ER. I packed a bag with a phone charger, your copy of Drown, and a cookie from Chick-fil-A. My final for a Fiction workshop was due the following afternoon, but it had to wait.

I was the fourth person to visit you in the hospital. I called the ER at Northwestern to see if you were there, and they said you were still in the waiting room.

I ran from the subway to the emergency room. Everyone looked old and frail; they wore masks on their faces, hobbling around on canes and walkers. You wore a grey hoodie and sat with your back to the entrance. Liz, your best friend, whom until that moment I had never met, sat beside you. You looked exhausted, but your face lit up when you saw me. You asked what I was doing there.

I said I had a phone charger, handing you the gifts I had brought. I told you that I wasn't normally a worrier and asked how you felt before sitting on the floor next to your legs. Your roommate had already brought a phone charger, you said. She and her boyfriend had waited with you until Liz had come down. She had beaten me by five minutes.

You leaned forward with your elbows on your knees and closed your eyes. Liz rubbed your back and I wanted to do something to comfort you. But I was so afraid of touching you, terrified you might recoil from my touch. I caressed the back of your calf softly. One stroke, with the back of my hand. Just enough contact to let you know it was intentional; that I wanted to be close. And that I wouldn't leave your side.

Hours later, the three of us sat in the doctor's office, you stripped down to a bra and surgical gown. Your back was exposed and, for the first time, I noticed the toned muscles in your shoulders from your days as a gymnast. It was the most naked I had ever seen you — the most exposed.

The monitor in the corner made a sickening honking noise every few seconds and Liz stood up to mute it. Neither of you could sit still as patients — you had to be involved, you had to keep your hands from sitting idly. I mentioned our yoga class from the night before — how I was still sore — and Liz smirked and said, Wait, you two do yoga together?

The two of you made eye-contact. It only lasted a half-second, but I could tell you were communicating something. You suggested I go home and work on my homework and I took the hint: you wanted to be alone with Liz.

A couple days later you invited me to lunch at a taco joint called Taco Joint. You said you wanted to thank me for basically saving your life. I reminded you that I had been the fourth to arrive, that there was no award for fourth responders, and apologized for having been in the way.

You radiated beauty that day. Your hair was sleek and straight, your fingernails polished. You had taken time to prepare and I wondered if it had been for me. I wanted to tell you how beautiful you were, but instead, moronically, I asked if you had done anything to your hair.

I wanted to hold your hand, to caress the smooth skin along your palms with my fingertips, to let you know that, even if things weren't all right — even if you were really sick — I would be there. I couldn't tell you I loved you, but I wanted to show you.

Months later I would learn that you'd had a boyfriend that night at the Emergency Room: a boyfriend you felt you needed to conceal. You told him you were in the hospital and he never showed up. You broke up with him the next day. It was absurd, you said, that your best friend would show up uninvited but your boyfriend didn't care enough to show up.

When we were alone, I wondered if you were performing for me; acting like a character in a novel, saying what you thought I wanted you to say and doing what you thought I wanted you to do. You always had a plan. You always knew what to say. If you were performing, you played your role as if you knew the ending.

I hoarded the mementos from our time together. The ceramic snowman mug from our first date, and the receipt from the bookstore; the pink button with the monkey from the comedy show on our second date: something so small and worthless that it should have been lost a thousand times over.

The first time I saw your apartment, we were still dating. I noticed your snowman mug on the bookshelf next to a stack of architecture books. Your bedroom was a bed and a laptop, with pictures of your grandfather and friends pinned up on the walls as if to protect you. I thought back to our first date when you mentioned that you loved oncology but hated the nightmares that accompanied most nights. You kept your clothes in a black dresser outside your bedroom door. You excused yourself into your bedroom to change, closing the door behind you, leaving me alone for a few moments. That was when I noticed a familiar pink button with a monkey sitting on the dresser.

For so long I wanted you to be my girlfriend. But instead you became my Chicago family. You became my confidant, my adventure buddy, my intellectual peer, and my best friend. You became the centerpiece of my Chicago experience, and you ferried me from the bleak anguish of a break-up to the hope that things might get better. How could I not love you for that?

Wherever life takes you, know that I'll always be here for you. I love you, unconditionally, as I love my family. Because you are my family — I knew it when I first met you, and I know it more strongly every day.

Have you ever heard the story about the nonfiction writer who fell madly in love with the nurse? He tried to write a memoir about their relationship, trying to capture every detail of every moment and conversation. He spent months writing about her, amassing a pile of word vomit two hundred pages thick. And he fell more and more in love with her, until he eventually moved away and she found someone else. But he remained in love, and he kept writing about her.

When he saw her again, months later, she was nothing like the woman he loved — nothing like the character he had created who shared her name and her hometown and who said her same words. Somewhere along the way, his nonfiction had turned to fiction.