43. Jenna
43
JENNA
I made it half a block before the tears started to stream down my face.
Everything about leaving Sy, our apartment, and this city felt strange. Sitting in the backseat of the car, I tried to convince myself that it was the right thing to do.
I looked down at my phone, a text from my mom on the home screen:
So excited to see you at the airport, honey. Safe flight!
Biting my lip, I tried to find the courage to reply but then a new text appeared on the screen:
We’ll see each other soon.
The words brought a new wave of tears to my eyes. I’d cried more this summer than I had in the last ten years. But every goodbye Sy and I had ever had was for a few weeks or a couple months for winter and summer breaks in college. At most, we spent two months in a row apart.
And even then, one of us usually went to visit the other.
But as the driver took us over the Williamsburg Bridge and onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
We hit a patch of traffic, the car crawling forward.
Turning around, I looked out the back window at the skyline. My eyes moved from the Freedom Tower and our apartment up toward the Empire State Building – a location I was now intimately familiar with.
I wasn’t pulled away until the car sped up and took an exit heading out to JFK.
I’d have to get used to cars again, walking wouldn’t really be an option in L.A. But I hated driving and I wasn’t sure how the fuck I was supposed to build a community with a collective love-hate relationship with the MTA.
The thought made me giggle, remembering all of Sy’s late-night rants about how lucky we were to live in a city with a – janky, yes – 24-hour public transit system.
How was I supposed to live without her waxing poetic about all of the things she loved?
Nearly forty minutes late, the car was slowing in front of my Terminal. The Uber driver hopped out and started to move my bags.
But my body refused to leave as I looked back at the city, a light haze cast over it from this distance.
My mind started to race.
What if I can’t leave?
The Uber driver tapped the window, making sure I was okay and prompting me to get a move on.
Swallowing hard, I put my hand on the door handle. This is it.