“Sorry I Missed You”
by Madeleine Medeiros
December 30, 2023
The glossy brushed-silver walls of the elevator do nothing to brighten the dimly-lit space. They only blurrily reflect my frame as the doors slide shut. The lights on the ceiling of the boxy lift are mismatched, one ceiling-tile light is a flickery blue-white fluorescent, and the other is a soft yellow—like the lights they pull over your head at the dentist’s office when your plaque is being scraped away. A soft chugging lurch sets the death-trap off on its upwards flight. The movement churns the half-stale airport bagel that I ate while waiting for my Uber from JFK International.
Being back in the city reminds me of last Christmas, and the hope I started to let go. If I opened my phone to the message app, scrolled to the last name on the list, and clicked on “Lou” a sea of blue text bubbles would populate, punctuated by short gray blips of responses. They’re marked by dates and times in corporate iOS lettering that span from last July to December, irregular intervals that became farther apart.
***
July 2nd 2022
—Hey, I’m in town this week. Let’s get coffee, on me!
August 10th 2022
– Sorry just saw this 🙁
August 12th 2022
—Call me! I’d love to know what you’re up to.
August 14th 2022
—Thinking of you in London. —Attached: JPEG file, 7 MB.
– “Lou liked your message at 3:41 am.”
– cute <33
November 28th
—Hi LouLou, are you around for lunch this week?
November 29th
– Thursday?
—That works! Lmk what time and I’ll pick you up!
– 11 at the regular spot?
November 30th
—“You liked Lou’s message at 2:30 pm.”
***
It wasn’t sudden, nor was it entirely gradual. It was something I knew was happening, and would likely happen, especially once I moved away from New York. It was like a leak in the bathroom—one where you don’t clean up the spray that escapes the shower curtain and let it seep into the cracked grout, ignoring it until the floor starts bubbling and peeling. When you finally rip away the linoleum tiles, you see the water stains and rotten wood, eaten away until there is no foundation.
“Maybe I just care too much,” I had said to my mother during my Christmas trip home last year. “Maybe I overestimated how close we were.”
“Or maybe Elouisa just turned out to be a bad friend.”
But I didn’t think that was it. She gets caught up in the here and now pretty easily. My moving to London didn’t help—crossing the pond into another time zone never spells out success in any kind of relationship. Whoever was in her immediate circle were the flowers she cared for, and I guess she considered me a cactus that could flourish without attending to. Instead, I was just a prickly and wilted version of the person she’d grown up with.
She took me to her wisdom-tooth removal, we would play hooky from school to get coffee; to get her car’s oil changed or my hair done, she took me to prom with her back in high school after a tragic breakup. I taught her how to do donuts in icy parking lots, and she would help me with my calculus homework. We were the kind of close where we called each other’s parents by their first names or could know exactly what the other was thinking with a perfectly timed eyebrow-raise and side-eye.
There was a kind of sisterly intimacy between us. Not in a weird sweet-home-Alabama way, but in a way where I could trust her with my whole self; if she wasn’t there with me during my most humiliating moments, she was the first one I’d call in tears to make me laugh. It was the kind of friendship where I could put my head on her shoulder, and she might rest her head on mine, or lean over and burp into my ear. With Lou, I wasn’t afraid to bear my soul or lend her my favorite pair of jeans.
The real knife in the gut was that she still talked to Bella all the time and not me.
***
December 30, 2022
—Are you going to Anne’s New Years thing tmr night? Still debating but would love to catch up. (sent December 30 at 11:07 am)
December 31, 2022
– leaving now, see you there! (delivered December 31 at 5:40 pm)
I shot up from my mother’s couch like I’d been stuck with a hot poker and rushed to my suitcase to throw on whatever sparkly junk I’d packed, dabbed on some makeup that was far too warm for my pale winter skin, and hailed a cab for downtown.
By the time I arrived at Anne’s and made my way through the packed threshold, kissing cheeks and hugging old acquaintances I pretended to remember or like, I found Lou.
“Hey LouLou!” I wrapped my arms around her waist and gave her a squeeze from behind. She was talking to Bella, who—I later found out—had driven her there.
“Hi baby!” She turned around and pressed her cheek to mine in greeting. Some of my too-summery makeup transferred to her freckled cheek, which was either coated in too much blush or was flushed from the poorly ventilated apartment and a glass and a half of something bubbly in her champagne flute.
I stayed for an hour and a half before the cheap champagne mixed with the smell of sweaty twenty-somethings made me feel lightheaded and pissy. Lou and I talked for maybe fifteen minutes before she went off with a friend of a friend to fix her melty eyeliner, returning with more interest in Bella before they were both whisked away by Anne’s roommate who said she needed help in the kitchen.
“Oh no, honey, you stay and relax, we’ll just be a minute,” the roommate patted my hand encouragingly—if not a bit patronizingly—as she ushered the other two to sweep up whatever broken glass or pull whatever burnt cookies out of the oven that demanded their attention.
After forty minutes I realized they weren’t coming back, although deep down I knew from the moment Lou turned and swished her shiny hair toward to the kitchen she was gone for the night. So I sent her a text and slid past the boozies toward the door, finally reaching a cool rush of breathable air at the elevator. Out in the bitter cold my breath billowed out in a steamy cloud ahead of me. The chilly air shot through my nostrils, burned my throat and woke me up from the tired stupor of being cornered alone with too many strangers in too small a space.
I looked down at my phone, checking the message I sent not two minutes prior:
—Good seeing you, I’m heading out but if you’re around tmr for coffee, my flight doesn’t leave until Thurs!
January 4, 2023
– have a safe flight sorry I missed you! (delivered at 9:02 pm EDT).
***
December 30, 2023
The elevator chugs to a halt as the door retracts to the side and reveals the sparkly white tiled floor ahead. It softly clacks under the sole of my red flats, which breaks up the high-pitched whine of my squeaky suitcase wheels. Reaching my mother’s apartment door, I shove the key in the lock and jiggle it open, dropping my bags at the threshold. Before I even take off my shoes, my phone vibrates in my pocket.
December 30, 2023
– Hiii Anne said you’re in town are you coming tonight? Bella’s hosting. (delivered at 7:06 pm)
I kick off my shoes and pad into the kitchen barefoot and make a beeline for the fridge. The glass screen of my iPhone illuminates my makeup-free face in blue light as I stare down at the message—the first one in a year.
I could easily drop everything I have going on (which is nothing) and show up. Maybe she’d hug me, call me “baby,” and things would be like they were before I went to London. Or maybe I’d be left leaning against the wall surrounded by a bunch of people I don’t know or like, waiting for someone who would maybe remember to come back to me.
I grab the first bottle of white wine I see and close the fridge door with a bump of my hip, eyes still glued to the screen. I swipe left and exit the message, press and hold until the red “delete message” button that appears, and confirm by pressing it with my thumb.
In an instant, the fractured timeline of half-answered messages or completely ignored attempts at communication are wiped away, like I was choosing to walk away rather than slipping out of a room nobody noticed I was in. I set the phone down on the counter, pour myself a glass, and take a sip.
Bittersweet and smooth going down. It tastes like letting go.
