HE WAS LATE. I WAS STANDING at the mouth of the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Manhattan side. This was going to be our first date. He had called and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. And now here we were.
It was a fall day. September twenty-third. It was chilly, but not cold. I wanted to move, though. I was anxious for him to get there.
He jogged over thirty-three minutes after we had planned to meet. He came up from the Brooklyn side, a sheepish smile on his face.
“We were on opposite ends,” he said. “I guess I should have specified.”
He grinned at me. I grinned at him. We started walking.
The walk over the Brooklyn Bridge is spectacular anytime, but at sunset it’s really something. It was like the universe had put us on opposite sides so we could walk together then, in that moment, with the sky turning from rage (red, orange) to surrender (blue, yellow) right around us.
Somewhere in the middle he slipped his hand into mine. It was thrilling.
“Tell me about you,” I said.
“I’d rather hear about you,” he said.
“I’m not that interesting,” I said.
“Not true.” He reached over with his free hand and brushed some hair out of my face. “You’re the most interesting girl in the world.”
I swallowed. “Well, I graduated from USC and I moved here immediately after. I live with my best friend.”
“In Chelsea,” he said.
“Right. In Chelsea. And I work for a crazy fashion designer.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess that’s the problem.” He squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. “What about you?”
“I got the job.”
“Red Roof?”
He nodded. “I took it,” he said, like he was confessing something.
“That’s great.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s a block away from my apartment.”
I laughed then, embarrassed at what I had just implied. He held my hand a little bit tighter.
“Want to see a movie?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“You pick, I’ll buy.”
We ended up seeing a showing of North by Northwest at a theater in Williamsburg I had never been to where they served up independent and second-run movies on a pull-down screen along with cheap red wine and four-dollar beers.
We bent our heads together. He put his arm around me. When Cary Grant said, “Apparently the only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead,” Tobias tilted my head back and kissed me.
It wasn’t a wild kiss. We’d have plenty of those. It was a benchmark. A chalk line on the asphalt. Start. His lips were soft and warm and I remember he tasted like cigarettes and honey. I never knew it was a combination I loved, but soon after I took up smoking, because Tobias did. It was something we’d do together—huddle on the fire escape of my fifth-floor walk-up, our hands chapped and shaking. It was winter by then. He was practically living with me. And we were in love.