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I snag a banana and a granola bar out of my bag and look both ways before doing what I love to call the New York bob-and-weave across the busy street and back onto the sidewalk.
It only takes me two blocks to scarf down the pathetic and very late lunch, but thankfully, the constant ache that had settled into my stomach wanes.
I’m a girl who loves to eat but one who is so busy somedays, she rarely remembers to actually do so. With the way I love carbs, it speaks more of just how busy my life is than anything else.
A piercing whistle cuts through the sound of the Avett Brothers’ “Live and Die” streaming through my headphones, and I turn to look over my shoulder and up the crowded NYC sidewalk.
A tall figure with dark brown hair and a tacky mustache stands out above the rest and makes me smile.
My best friend Kevin has been my rock throughout the entirety of law school. We’re both in our third year at NYU Law, but he’s a couple years younger than I am. I took a year and a half off between getting my bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California to travel the United States, exploring all the corners of our country few people get to see.
It was sketchy sometimes, being a woman by herself on the road, and drained all of the money I’d saved from odds-and-ends jobs during high school and undergrad, but by and large, it’s become the most impactful year and a half of my life thus far.
I’ve seen so many different facets of life that exist here—right here in this country—and the different ways they live and work. There are cultures and subcultures and nuances even below that, that I, a California girl, never would have known existed otherwise.
And I like to think it’s made me more open-minded about—and more respectful of—other people’s opinions.
Not to mention, it made me learn how to stretch a dollar to surprising lengths.
Kevin finally winds his way through the crowd and falls into step beside me. I’d say we’re shoulder to shoulder, but in reality, his shoulder is about two feet above mine. At seven foot two, he has to duck to go through doorways. I, despite many years of wishing for long legs, barely clear five feet. The sight of us walking together must be hilarious to outsiders.
“You sure stand out in a crowd, man.” I flash him a cheeky grin. “Waldo would be horrified to be your height. They’d have to rename the books Here’s Waldo just because he could never get anything by anyone.”
Kevin rolls his eyes at my teasing—something I’m always doing to him—and picks me up and into his side with one arm.
My feet tread air above the ground until I squeal my apologies. “Geez. Okay, I’m sorry, all right? You can put me down. And all this after I covered your shift at the library yesterday!”
“The two actions aren’t mutually exclusive, Gem,” he says, using the nickname he came up with for me our first year as he reacquaints me with Earth’s gravity. He lifts one finger. “Thanks for covering my shift.” Then he lifts another. “Stop mocking my height.” I shake my head as he smiles. “See? Two different things.”
“Whatever, Mom. How’d lunch with Julie’s parents go anyway?”
He groans and tightens the straps on his backpack. After a couple years of friendship, I know Kevin well enough to know that means he’s trying to figure out how to say something was fucking awful without just outright saying it was fucking awful. He’s polite like that. “Fine, I guess. Her dad kept asking me to tell him stories from my NBA days…”
I wince. Kevin played in the NBA for a month and a half before he broke his back in a car accident, and the doctors told him he could never play again. As a result, anytime anyone brings up his glory years, he doesn’t really feel much glory at all. I can’t imagine his fiancée’s father being the one asking the questions would make it any easier. How, exactly, do you tell your future father-in-law to fuck off?
“How about her mom?” I ask, trying to steer the conversational boat to smoother tides. “It’s always easier to win over the mom when you’re a guy.”
“She’s some kind of shark on Wall Street and apparently had her Bluetooth surgically placed inside her ear. Every five seconds, Julie would go to say something to her, and she’d hold up a finger in her face and say ‘You’re a go for Nina.’”
“Oh my God, stop!” I shriek. Several sidewalk power walkers turn to look at me, but I ignore them. “You’re a go for Nina? You’ve got to be making that up.”
Kevin shakes his head as he holds the door to the Frankfurt Building open for me. Two women and a beret-wearing hipster sneak out before we can walk in, and I roll my eyes. Undergrads at NYU swarm this building like locusts, and not a single one of them I’ve met has any sense of propriety.
