Just a few minutes later I’m closing the door to my apartment and looking down at my blank phone.

No calls. No messages. No nothing.

I kick off my shoes and collapse on my couch.

“She saw me.” I hold up my left hand. “And ran.” I hold up my right hand. I look back and forth at my two hands as if they could somehow help me figure out what she was thinking. My hands drop.

“She saw me. I said her name. She realized I knew who she was. And then she ran.” I press at the space between my eyebrows and get up for a glass of water. “She ran,” I tell the inside of the kitchen cabinet as I pull out a glass. “She ran,” I tell the running faucet. “She ran,” I tell the glass of water before I drink it to the bottom and set it in the sink.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and bring up JD’s number. I call her. Just like I expect it to, the call goes straight to voicemail. I realize it’s the first time she’s ever not answered my call because I’ve never heard her voicemail message before.

“Hey, you got Jessie. Try again later.”

There’s her name. In her voice.

Ugh. She literally ran to get away from me. I hang up without leaving a voicemail.

I feel sick. Unfortunately, I recognize the feeling that’s icing over the pit of my stomach right now. It’s the exact same feeling I had when I woke up in Vegas, right before I realized I was a newly married man. This is the feeling of me realizing that I’ve just screwed up something incredibly precious and important but I’m not exactly sure how.

I won’t pester her. She’s a woman who lives in my building who didn’t want me to know who she was. This isn’t a movie. Waiting outside her door would only be menacing and weird. First things first, she needs to feel comfortable in her own home. She sprinted away from me on the street.

I have to show her I won’t push. I will give her space.

I bounce on the balls of my feet. I’m nervous and uncomfortable because that course of action also gives her so much room for misinterpretation. She sprinted away from me for reasons I either don’t know or don’t understand. Now that she’s not answering my calls, the only thing she’ll have left of us is whatever that reason is. I don’t want that mysterious reason to get bigger than . . . us.