It was Zara's idea. Everything that was about to go wrong was Zara's idea.
To be fair, she did not know that yet. Neither did I. At the time it was just a Friday night and she was standing in my doorway in a red dress looking like she had somewhere to be, which she did, and she wanted me to come with her, which I did not want to do.
"I have reading," I said.
"You said that last Friday."
"It was true last Friday. It is true this Friday."
"Marcelin." She leaned against the doorframe and looked at me with the expression she used when she had already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up. "We have been in New York for six weeks. Six weeks, and all you have seen is the inside of this apartment and the inside of that library. That is not a life. That is a punishment."
"It is medical school," I said. "It is supposed to feel like a punishment."
"One night," she said. "Three hours. If you hate it we leave, I promise."
I looked at my reading, looked at Zara then looked at my reading again.
"Who is having this party?" I said.
"A friend of a friend, someone called Josh. He has a rooftop."
"A rooftop."
"In Brooklyn. It is supposed to be nice."
I thought about the reading. I thought about six weeks of nothing but the library and this apartment and the walk between the two. I thought about the Sunday light turning everything gold and how for one afternoon I had felt like a person and not just a student.
"Fine," I said. "One hour."
Zara smiled the smile of someone who had known this was coming.
"Wear something that isn't scrubs," she said.
The rooftop was nice.
I did not want to admit that, because I had spent the entire subway ride there preparing to be unimpressed, but it was nice. The city stretched out in every direction, all lit up and huge and completely unbothered to the tiny figures standing on top of it. Someone had hung lights along the edges. There was music, not too loud, and people standing in groups talking the way people talk when they are relaxed and not thinking about reading lists.
I had forgotten what that looked like.
"See," Zara said, handing me a drink. "People. Normal people doing normal things."
"Med students are not normal people."
"These are not med students. Josh studies architecture, his friends are architects and artists and one person who makes furniture, apparently. Nobody here knows what the brachial plexus is, and that is exactly the point."
I did not know what the brachial plexus was either, fully, but I did not say that.
We found a spot near the edge and stood looking out at the city, and for a while it was enough to just stand there. The air was cool the way New York air gets in October, sharp , clean, and the lights went on forever. I felt something in my shoulders that I had not noticed was there, slowly i start to let go.
"Okay," I said quietly.
"Okay what?"
"Okay, this was a good idea."
Zara bumped my shoulder with hers. "I know," she said. "I usually am."
I was not looking for anyone that night.
I was standing at the edge of the rooftop, drink in hand, thinking about the reading I had left at home, when I heard him laugh.
Not at anything I said. I had not spoken to him yet. He was across the rooftop in a group of people, and something someone said made him laugh. It was nothing special. Just a laugh. But it was easy and real, the kind that does not care who is watching, and without meaning to, I looked up.
He was tall, dark hair, nice face. Not the kind of handsome that hits you straight away, but the kind that grows on you quietly, like you keep noticing something new every time you look.
He was holding a drink but not really drinking it. Just holding it. Like someone who was comfortable enough to forget it was there.
I looked away.
"You are staring," Zara said, without looking at me.
"I was not staring. I was looking in that direction."
"For quite a long time."
"I was looking at the buildings ."
"The building is behind him?" she said. "Try again."
I did not try again. I turned and looked very consciously at the actual buildings scattered around, took a sip of my drink, and decided that was the end of that.
It was not the end of that.
He found me twenty minutes later at the edge of the rooftop where I had gone to stand alone for a moment, not because I was unhappy but because I had been around people for two hours and I needed thirty seconds of quiet. I was looking out at the lights when I heard someone come and stood beside me.
I assumed it was Zara.
It was not Zara.
"Good view from here," he said.
I turned. It was him. Up close he was just as I had noticed from across the rooftop, and somehow more so.
"Yes," I said.
"I haven't seen you here before," he said. "Josh's parties are usually the same twenty people."
"My friend dragged me," I said. "I did not want to come."
He smiled. "Are you glad she did?"
I thought about saying something smooth and neutral. I thought about the reading waiting at home, the six weeks of nothing but work, and the way my shoulders had felt an hour ago and the way they felt now.
"Yes," I said. "Actually."
"Good." He held out his hand. "Ethan."
"Marcelin," I said.
He repeated it back to me, the full name, not shortening it or stumbling over it the way people sometimes did, just saying it like it was a name he intended to remember.
I noticed that. I should not have noticed that, but I did.
We talked for an hour.
I did not mean to. I had meant to say hello, exchange the usual words, and go find Zara. But he asked me something about India, not in the way people sometimes did, like it was a curiosity, but like he actually wanted to know, and I started talking and then he started talking, and then somehow an hour had gone by and Zara was appearing at my elbow with her coat on and her eyebrows raised.
"Ready?" she said, looking between us.
"Yes," I said. I turned to Ethan. "It was nice to meet you."
"You too," he said. He paused for just a moment. "I hope you come to the next one."
I smiled, followed Zara to the door, and did not look back, which I was proud of.
In the elevator Zara looked at me and said nothing, which was deeply unlike her.
"Don't," I said.
"I did not say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was just going to say," she said, "that you were talking to him for a very long time for someone who did not want to come tonight."
"He was easy to talk to," I said.
"Mm," said Zara.
"It was nothing."
"Mm," said Zara again.
The elevator doors opened. We walked out into the Brooklyn night and I pulled my coat around me and thought about the way he had said my name. The full name. Like it was a name he intended to remember.
It was nothing, I told myself.
It was nothing at all.