An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill

Spoiler: It doesn’t work (until she stops trying).

The year after I stopped drinking, I fell in love with my neighbor. I was 27, working as a copywriter, and living in a studio apartment on Gay Street in the West Village that could fit my California king bed and almost nothing else. He lived across the street in a larger apartment that had beautiful morning light and a mouse infestation. One afternoon he found me sitting on his stoop smoking a cigarette and sat down, looking like a young Paul Newman. We talked for a long time, during which I learned that he owned a local restaurant and had recently broken up with his girlfriend. Eventually, we headed up to his apartment, where we kissed until it felt like it was only us and the mice in his walls still awake in the whole city.