My last text to him was a David Carson-style collage of the twin towers. I thought he’d text back “lolz.” Twin tower memes were funny now. Or maybe they weren’t. I followed up a few times: “I’m so sorry!” “I don’t know where that came from!” “Oops, wrong pic!” But nothing. Until now. He had slid back into my DMs. “Let’s get drinks,” he said. “I want to explain.”

Another person might have assumed the best. “Explain what?” they might have replied, unaware that time had transpired at all. They certainly wouldn’t generate endless explanations indicating signs of something defective deep within themselves. He had probably been busy. People dropped off the face of the Earth all the time. It’s a chaotic place, this hurtling chunk of mass and gas. It was on each of us to cultivate our own sense of stability and inner peace. “No one can make you feel anything,” my mother always told me. “That’s on you.” Any hell I occupied was one of my own making.

“Isn’t this the guy who ghosted you,” my boyfriend asked, when I told him about our drinks plans. We had been dating for two years, or maybe six. It was hard to keep track. Our bond was strong, but recently we decided to test it by renovating a brownstone. Every day brought fresh horrors. Together, we were discovering how home ownership was mostly an exercise in getting water to places where you wanted it, and out of places where you didn’t.

“Well, we weren’t dating,” I said. “So it’s not technically ghosting.”

“What do you hope to get out of this?”

“Peace,” I said. “I want to finally know peace.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “Just make sure you know what you want going in.”

I loved how grounded he was, like the current that ran through our hot water heater and nearly killed him earlier this week. Together, we made decisions based on facts and YouTube comments. But what did I want? Of course, peace. To excise the lump of dread pressing against my sternum. And to be universally adored by everyone I ever met.

So there I sat at the hifi-record-bar-slash-vegan-cafe across from my old friend, primarily in the sense that he was ten years older than me. A new climbing gym loomed catty-corner, nicer and more expensive than the one we used to go to. The one we used to go to had been canceled during the pandemic for underpaying employees and being complicit in systemic racism, and now seemed like it would go out of business. The new gym had a rooftop deck and juice bar. It was also probably racist.

A waitress took our order. There were four kinds of negronis on the menu. We each ordered one. I told him that I had started writing fiction and was learning Spanish, that I was spending a lot of time with my boyfriend, who I loved very much.

“I’ve also been writing,” he said. “I’d love to share some of my writing with you.”

“Mmmm,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. It had a large rhubarb-pineapple garnish.

“I’m writing a story about anthropomorphic traffic lights,” he said.

“Wow,” I said. “That sounds incredible.”

My phone vibrated on the table. My boyfriend. I pressed ignore.

“I know that feeling,” said the old friend. “Tell me, are you happy?”

“Yes, very happy,” I said, pushing the corners of my mouth into a wide grin. Sure, things could be better. Things could always be better.

“That’s great. I’m really happy for you,” he said.

“I feel lucky, but really luck really has nothing to do with it—I am exceptionally privileged. I have help. I am so so grateful for all the help I have. Sure, sometimes I feel crushed by insurmountable debt and a healthcare system that requires me to always be hemmed into a fulltime job, but besides that, things are soooooo good.”

“I’m divorced now,” he said. “That’s why I never responded to your last text. I wasn’t allowed to talk to you.”

I wanted to ask why his divorce would have anything to do with me, or why he had to wait years to share this information, rather than simply texting me back. I wanted to ask, but couldn’t, as I had tried to swallow my garnish and was now choking.

“I would’ve told you, but I wasn’t allowed to talk to you. Actually you came up a lot. It was kind of a thing,” he said, looking at me with his beady eyes.

I was unable to ask what kind of a thing it was. I looked around at the other people seated at tables and wondered if their lives, too, were flashing before their eyes. The building sat across from a notorious superfund site, and it was conceivable that toxins had leached into its core, contributing to its decidedly unwell ambiance. Years from now, there’d be a class-action lawsuit on behalf of anyone who had sat beneath their brutalist atrium. I replayed every decision I made that had led me to this moment. Joining a climbing gym. Responding to DMs that didn’t merit a response at all. Garnishes meant to be seen and not consumed.

I took another sip from my negroni, an attempt to wash down the candied fruit. Red syrupy drink dribbled down my chin.

Spots clouded my vision. A traffic light loomed, flashing yellow. “What do you hope to get out of this?” it asked me. My vision blurred.

“We should go climbing some time,” he said.

The waitress returned and began to ask about food, but— “Holy shit, are you okay?”

I locked eyes with her and tried to smile, but then she was behind me, interwoven hands pushing into my flesh, reenacting every choking poster I’ve ever seen in every restaurant. She was a traffic light, too. We were all traffic lights. I was red.

And suddenly, something deep, deep within me dislodged, and I was free.