B and I decided we’d try to stay together. Close, but not touching, we sat with our legs crossed on B’s pink and blue coverlet. Her entire room was Danish-pastel themed. Our relationship was only a few months old, but we were best friends. I was hesitant at first. I hadn’t truly considered the weight of her study abroad until then. Living somewhere else, frequenting London clubs, meeting new people. Just the thought made me anxious.
Before we left for Winter Break, B took me to Detroit for the holiday decorations. We saw the huge tree. We watched the children ice skating. Without intending to, I’d gotten into the habit of thinking about last chances. I have a favorite photograph, snapped by a stranger in front of the ice rink; it’s a beautiful picture. We’re both smiling, shining even, like how snow starts to glisten before it melts.
When I returned from break in January, B caught a mild case of COVID-19. We had a few days together before she left. Once I saw her, I gave her a small penguin plushie I’d acquired from a gift shop during my travels. I have a tendency of purchasing gifts and doing favors for the people I love. Shortly before our talk, B and I visited a pottery expo where we found a beautiful, sort of pricey mug. I asked her if she wanted it. She made a face at me. After dropping her off at her apartment, I went back and bought it. The surprise of the gift is always better without them knowing.
I caught the virus, probably from her, and wound up missing the first two weeks of class. By the time I came out of quarantine, just like that, she had already arrived at Heathrow. We talked via text every day, and had decided to turn read-receipts on — that way we could feel the intimacy of knowing the other was on the phone, looking at the texts at the same time.
London time ran five hours ahead, so usually B and I would talk around seven o’clock for me, midnight for her. She felt uneasy about her new life and the prospect of making new friends. She was trying hard to fit in, and would usually return home late from a party or club. I would wait for the call.
I struggled adapting to life without B. We existed to each other as little particles of information on a phone. Anyone who’s dated long distance can probably relate to feeling connected, yet simultaneously apart. How could I approach normal social interaction anymore, being split between two places? I didn’t want to make new friends for fear of losing touch with B. Part of me felt like I couldn’t talk to women at all — as if a phantom would deliver this information, out of context, to B, and upset her.
Before she left, communication from B’s university had fallen through regarding dorm housing, so she had to look for a place cheap enough to live in, but close enough to walk to class. She found a shared flat with two men, all strangers to one another, in a relatively sketchy part of town. I worried, of course, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to worry her. Whenever we FaceTimed, I noticed the empty white walls of her room, a small cubicle with a radiator in one corner. Over time, the walls filled with posters and prints. The mug I bought her sat on top of the radiator, and the penguin plushie would often make an appearance.
For the most part, life continued as usual, except a part of me felt torn, transplanted into a foreign place. I spent countless hours on my phone, watching to see if the read receipt had appeared. Or worse, if the read receipt had appeared, but she hadn’t said anything. The anxiety was shredding. I regret that I never voiced these concerns to my friends. I talked about it with B, which occasionally would start an argument. Most times, I just bottled it up.
I proposed we turn the read receipts off. She agreed, but worried it was a sign I was drifting away. She may have been right. I couldn’t tell.
We busied ourselves by applying to internships, getting rejected by internships. We worked on our individual projects (we were both making zines). Some weekends, B would travel to other cities in Europe, like Milan. I would text, asking her to send photographs of her adventures. With all the excitement in her life, I felt a need to match it — to engage constantly with my phone, or risk being forgotten.
I spent a lot of time alone. As soon as possible, I booked a trip to London for spring break. One day, B called me, crying because she’d broken the ceramic mug, worried she’d done something irreparable. I told her I’d fix it when I arrived. She only had to wait.
***
The day after I landed in London, B and I broke up. We’d gotten breakfast together at her favorite café. On the walk home, everything fell apart.
She had to go to class later that day; we went together. In her grief, she’d forgotten her MacBook charger. I sprinted a mile and a half back to her flat, found her charger and sprinted back, all while wearing Birkenstocks. My feet ached and started to blister. It was probably the fastest I’d ever ran.
We had tickets for a play in SoHo that evening. The Tube workers had chosen the same day to go on strike, so none of the lines were running. We took the bus, but I’d mapped us to the wrong venue. It was raining lightly. We made it to the correct theater. Afterwards, it started to pour. We were walking, soaked, and finally caught a bus we hoped would take us home.
That night, we talked on her bed in her room in London, close but not touching. I cried. She cried. All of that pain that had been bottled up, I finally let out.
The next day, we had tickets for “Les Misérables.” Neither of us had seen it. We took the Tube early into the city and stopped by a bookstore. We were late to the play, and our seats were terrible, but it didn’t matter. We held hands the entire time and didn’t let go when they got sweaty. The play was a triumph.
We were back together, fragile but working.
The rest of the week was magical. It was as if there was nothing left to lose. I went out, bought some superglue from the market by her flat, and sealed the mug back together. I asked B to give me a haircut, and she did, even though she was nervous about messing up.
***
When I arrived back in the United States, it was cold again. My bank account was empty. Snowflakes floated around, but weren’t exactly falling. B sent me a photo: my hair clippings were all over her flat. A few days later, she sent me another photo: her drinking out of the mug.
“Tastes a bit like glue,” she texted.
She wanted to tell me that she was suffering, but decided to figure it out for herself. She relied on her new friends a lot. They helped her, encouraged her. One of her closest friends, an international student from Brazil, had just broken up with her boyfriend. Her friend said, “You need to change something. Maybe you break up. That’s a change. Maybe you should try first to change something else.”
Part of her was afraid that, when I was in London, I was just placating her until the week was over. Part of her felt like our relationship was doing more harm than good. B spent a lot of time wandering around the city with her notebook. Going to different places, she walked all across East London, went to museums. She would lay in her bed and listen to songs that made her feel okay. I learned recently that the weeks after I left were some of the hardest in B’s life.
“I was so in love with you, the whole time,” B told me at a coffee shop in Ann Arbor. “I took the Tube home, and thought about it. I realized I couldn’t ruin something great because of my pride, or my fear. Part of trusting you was relinquishing control. I kind of decided, in that moment, I was just going to trust you.”
“We were feeling the same things,” I said, after listening. “Just a bit differently.”
I’d been walking home in late March, a few weeks after my trip to London. Michigan was in a relative warm spell, but still cold. I noticed the moon above our neighbor’s house. The sky was still pale blue — early enough for B to be awake. I sent a photograph.
“The moon,” I typed.
“If I look at the moon,” she replied, “and you look at the moon, then we will be looking at the same moon.”
“I’m looking. I can see it through the trees.”
“I’m looking at the ceiling of clouds where the moon should be.”
A minute wait. I watched the moon, trying to imagine B in her flat, gazing upwards.
“Oh my gosh,” she said.
“What’s up?”
“There it is!” She sent back a photograph of the moon shining softly through the parted clouds, like a lamp through a window. “Can you picture me here looking at the moon?”
“I can see you clearly,” I replied.
“Is your neck craned back to look?”
“Yes.”
“And the nighttime air feels nice?”
“It’s a little chilly actually,” I typed. “My hands are a bit cold. Because the sun has gone down. Not freezing though.”
Statement Correspondent Steve Liu can be reached at liuste@umich.edu.