It was after midnight and I had left work. I’d been assisting the curator at a festival underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and knew I needed to be back there at six in the morning to start my next shift. The difference between two hours of sleep and one hour felt inconsequential by that point, so I decided to walk back to my apartment instead of taking one of the pay rolled taxis home, where my flatmate’s keyboard was humming with static in the living room, and my suitcase was zipped and empty, underneath my mattress. I would often text my boyfriend on this journey home, wishing him a good morning and asking him empty questions – but I knew the answers to them, and didn’t care anymore.

The air was warm; the kind of air I’d heard about in films set in New York City, and my skin was soft in my linen dress. I took off the work t-shirt I had layered over, to let my shoulders sigh in the breeze, my right indented from a heavy bag strap. I smelled of grass and expensive spirits. Almond extract. Negroni. I didn’t drink. Still don’t, but welcomed the perfume of it all.

Better than sweat, I thought.

Along Broad Street, somewhere between the Financial District and Seaport, I heard the din of a song rumble to me, passing the scaffold and the brown stone and the bins, soon empty. Over the drains and competing with the underground rushing noise of a subway train. I walked closer to it – it was in the direction I was going – and met it with two figures, sat outside of a closed juice bar, the song playing from a speaker at their feet. I slowed down as I passed them, looking at each in the eye. One of the men was slight in build, his hair the widest part of him, styled like an elaborate tree. He had a basketball shirt on, trousers that cut off at his calves and eyes so narrowly open that he appeared to be sleeping upright. At his side, a hardback of The Girl on the Train, pages dog eared and dustcover partially ripped.

Where you going? the other guy asked.

His hair was the same colour as the brick behind him and it curled around his eyebrows. A white shirt, with the collar pressed up against his narrow neck, brought him to the foreground, as did his fair stare. His eyes were more open than the guy he was sharing the bench with.

You’re not from around here, he said, leaving his mouth open at the last word to lift a joint into it, and inhale.

I told him where I was heading, and he asked if I wanted to sit with them instead.

We’ll be awake for a couple more hours. You can keep me company and then walk back to work.

I laughed, and immediately resigned to the idea in my mind, slumping into the bench.

I had been in a relationship with my boyfriend for almost three years by the time this evening unfurled to me. I explained this to the white-collared friend outside of the juice bar, as he listened, nodding, slow.

We’d broken up three or four times for the same reason; him worried that we were wasting our time at university by being in a relationship throughout. A worry I deemed baseless, unromantic and unimportant until we broke up that last time, four years later — one year after this evening in Brooklyn — and the regret knocked me over, all at once.

You were right, I would whisper into my now empty bedroom.

You were right.

You were right.

We would break up on a Thursday afternoon – me hanging onto him like a life raft in a storm, and him shaking my tight grip loose until I was exhausted and let go. We would each sleep with someone else – me reluctantly just to keep the tally fair, him excitedly, exercising his freedom – then come back to each other the following Wednesday with tired and guilty eyes.

I’d packed for this trip to New York at his Mother’s white stucco home in North West London. He was also packing for a trip – him to Kosovo, hoping to research the mining tradition of southeast Europe for his degree fieldwork. The day before our flights, he went out to buy some supplies and left me in the house, telling me I might find some of the toiletries I’d need around his bedroom or his office, and should I see something suitable, I was welcome to take it with me.

That’s when I found the phone. Exactly the same model as the phone he used everyday but with a sticker on the backside of it, dirty.

There it was, lying at the bottom of his desk drawer, under cue cards and dried up highlighter pens, ziplock bags smaller than my palm, and cigarette papers. The jolt from the opening of the drawer woke it up, and on it, a stack of notifications at the bottom of the screen.

Sarah sent you two new messages today at 14:57

Cristina sent you a new message today at 08:13

Anvi sent you a new message today at 01:33

Somebody Super Liked you! Find out who, yesterday at 23:13

I opened the phone and looked at the messages, each one shining with desire and fizzing potential.

He didn’t have a password on his phone? The curl-headed guy asked.

No, I replied. Why?

My guy wanted you to catch him, he said.

Bet, said his friend, nodding, his eyes now fully closed.

Reading through the messages, I got a glimpse of the way we used to speak to each other, before we built all of the contempt and boredom. I read through messages where he complimented their hair, laughed at their jokes, and eventually asked them to meet for a drink, coyly trying to balance confidence with a safe self-awareness in the same way, each time.

I know we’ve not been speaking long but I think we have a connection and I’d like to learn more about you in person. Would you like to go for a drink some time?

Slow, long snores started creeping out of the skinny guy as I spoke, until one loud, trapped gasp woke him up enough to jolt him. He picked up his speaker, turned it off, and walked through the door behind him.

Then it was just the two of us, out in the street on the bench. The blue light of the juice refrigerators drenching our faces. He looked at me with a smile, and put his hand on my knee. Cold.

It’s a good thing you found out who this guy really is, so you could leave him and move on with your life. You deserve more than that guy.

I laughed meekly and he kissed me.

Want to come up? He said.

Yes, I said.