Holding on, making room

My sister’s apartment on Grove Street has a mouse problem. You can hear their paws tapping the drywall at night. Catching one of the mice is a rite of passage. Some go quietly, while others squeal when you pick them up. Whenever they scurry across the room, we lift our feet and squeal with them.

I move to New York City in November of 2020. After staying at my aunt’s apartment for a month, my sister invites me to stay with her and her roommates while I look for my own place. The living room has exposed brick, and my temporary bedroom faces 7th Avenue. The glare of evening streetlights bursts through the window, covering my wall with dots of color. Downstairs, people drink what I will learn are espresso martinis. I quickly feel like I’m living in the center of the world. I want an apartment just like it.

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In January of 2021, I move into a two-bedroom apartment on Thompson Street with Milena, one of my best friends from high school. It is a COVID miracle deal. The following year, we will move out, and it will go on the market for more than twice what we paid.

Black tiling covers our bathroom’s walls, and there is a tiny window that faces a courtyard. We leave it open because it starts to feel like a greenhouse when we run the hot water. We are almost always in this bathroom together, even when it barely fits a person, brushing our teeth over the tiny sink, or having a conversation while one of us is in the shower, the other on the toilet.

When we first move in, we eat a lot of pizza on the wooden floor. The apartment has an all-in-one washer-dryer that washes but doesn’t really dry. We spread most of our clothes around the living room, crack a window, get impatient, and fold it all while it’s still damp.

Another one of my best friends from high school, Maria, lives on the same block, two buildings over, and we do everything together. I text ya voy, and I am truly there, two minutes later, coat over my pajamas, ringing the doorbell. It’s a gift. Jana lives a ten-minute walk away, but she is never not with us. It’s the era of sleepovers, and we are fifteen again. During that year, we are single on Valentine’s Day, so we wear red and pink and cook pasta with tomato sauce, pairing it with lots of wine. I believe with deep conviction that there is no one more interesting or fun than my friends.

I teach at a private school during the day, teach an evening class online, and edit college essays on the train home, but I don’t remember feeling tired. I do remember Milena doing Zumba in the living room, the sound of her key in the door, the anticipation of an epic story.

Eight months into living together, Milena leaves. Her work visa expires soon, and her grandma gets sick suddenly. We celebrate my birthday on a Tuesday, and by Friday she is gone. The apartment is quiet, and the bathroom is lonely. I keep finding pieces of her throughout the apartment: two large mugs with kittens on them, a Russian doll, clothes underneath the sofa.

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I move to a studio on the Upper East Side to be closer to work. It’s on the first floor, facing a tree-lined courtyard, and I am so unbelievably proud of myself. I am a teacher and I can afford my own apartment. I can run in Central Park after work. I cut my commute by fifteen minutes. I’m optimizing and adulting.

The only problem is the living alone part. I’m angry at everyone who lied when they said I was going to love it. I’m more angry at myself for being incapable of loving it, for being needier than I want to admit. I sleep with the bathroom light on every night. Sometimes I leave the TV on to hear the sound of someone else’s voice. When I am constantly surrounded by other people and choose to spend time alone, it’s nice. When the default is alone, I find it crippling. Diego sleeps over often.

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The following year, Diego goes to Boston for business school, and I move back in with roommates. Many are confused by this decision. It sounds like I’m regressing. It’s a four-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on Broome Street with friends from college.

At Broome, everyone is always in the living room and there is always something on: TV, laptop, music, stove. Fran is in the open kitchen, making zucchini. Fern and Alix are on the sofa, laptops open, finishing a presentation. Over the sound of TV voices, someone gets a text and suddenly we’re having a loud conversation about someone I don’t know. Twenty minutes later, we’re talking about the political situation in Venezuela, or reevaluating our careers and life choices over asparagus. We are a heavily therapized group. It’s easy for me to tap into this frequency.

I’m back to sharing a bathroom. The electrical bill is insane, and in the winter, we compete over who sits near the heater in the living room. I go to bed almost every night that winter with my feet and hands cold. But I am so, so happy.

I learn to loosen up, buy baggier jeans, and wear (some) makeup. They call it the Barbie house, and feminine energy squirms through the thin walls on Friday, taunting me to get out of bed and get dressed, to linger in front of the mirror, to wear a skirt. Fran does her hair. Alix changes the music to something deep and house-like. Fern changes her outfit, a trail of black clothes following her feet. I am almost always borrowing something. The bedrooms don’t have closets so we each have an Ikea wardrobe in the hallway, and their sliding doors are always open. The closets are shared.

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Fran and I move to Williamsburg the following year. It’s a third-floor walk-up with big windows and a view of the city. On our first day there, we sit on the floor of the living room, labeling our books with our initials. We drill floating shelves into the wall and color-code our library. Fran even buys a plant. The sunset sneaks through the window, turning our living room pink.

We listen to Gracie Abrams before going out on Halloween, or on a Tuesday night over salmon bowls, the lyrics sprawled across the screen. We listen to so much Gracie Abrams that we convince ourselves we are sad about things we aren’t sad about. We go to her concert together, and her music feels like a time capsule.

On Thanksgiving, Fran stuffs a roasted chicken with rosemary and lemon. I chop potatoes, and we feast over Christmas music and wine. Another day, we make a giant cookie, just because.

It’s Diego’s second year in Boston and I am often packing and unpacking a carry-on bag. I tell myself Fran is also traveling a lot to feel better about my constant absence. We start texting to coordinate schedules. “Let’s hang out when I am back,” I say, and we do, but not in the same uninterrupted way. I am gone the entire last month of our lease.

In our final week in Brooklyn, I pack quickly. I stuff hangers and towels and clothes into boxes, taping them shut before they’re even full to expedite the process and avoid feeling. I am moving in with Diego. It’s the logical next step. But when we take down the hanging shelves and divide our books again, I cry into Fran’s shoulder. I want to stay with my friend, sink into our sofa and freeze my life in Brooklyn.

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Diego and I move in together in July of 2025. He doesn’t start work till August, so every day he builds a new piece of furniture. On Monday, we have a bed and dresser. On Tuesday, a TV console and two identical bookshelves. We don’t put our initials in the books because (hopefully) this merging of libraries is for the long haul.

Somehow our home holds space for all of his toys: golf clubs, skis, tennis rackets. A surfboard hangs in our living room. As I help him unpack boxes, I realize I have moved in with a hoarder.

Diego works late in the living room, three monitors forming a fortress around his face. The silence we can hold for hours, him at his desk and me on the sofa, watching TV, feels sacred and safe. There is a golden retriever named Theo on our floor, and every time we run into him, Diego runs up and down the hallway, Theo trailing behind. Diego always scratches his ears for too long.

When I get home and spiral about work, Diego’s advice is practical. Nine times out of ten, I don’t want to hear it. Nine times out of ten, it’s what I probably need to hear. I am usually the last one to be ready, which is new for me. He always waits.

A garbage truck growls by our bedroom every night, so Diego buys a white noise machine. Even without it, I sleep within minutes, our backs just touching.

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Many of my friends have left New York. It is one of the truest things about the city: people leave. When I wait on the platform for the 5 train, my blouse stuck to my sweaty back, I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I tell myself this makes me sturdier, having lasted longer, but maybe it just means I’m reluctant to change.

When I’m alone in my apartment, I eat ice cream on the sofa and watch Sex and the City and listen to Gracie Abrams. Fran (now in San Francisco) and I text screenshots of our favorite lyrics. It’s hard to fully replicate the texture of an experience that has passed and will likely not happen again. As I write this, I’m sitting on our sofa, the same sofa Fran and I had during our time in Brooklyn. It’s covered in brown stains from the chocolate-covered strawberries we often ate out of the bag.

When I walk down Thompson Street, where Milena and I once lived, the chess tables outside of Vesuvio Playground are still there, but our dry cleaner is now a coffee shop. In a few years, it will probably be something else. But when I look into the window of our old apartment, I see myself, and if I look close enough, I see us, bent over our wet clothes, laughing.