“You too,” he said, already pressing a button on his meter to clear my fare away and get ready for the next person he was going to pick up. I looked at it for just a second—not at zero, but at two-fifty, because New York—and felt, in that moment, just how many different stories there were in this city. He’d go off and pick someone else up, someone else either having the best or worst night of their life—or possibly both, like mine had been—or just a night, barely thought of again, one of thousands that all blended together. “You good?” he asked, startling me out of these thoughts.

“Uh-huh,” I said, sliding out and slamming the door behind me. I stepped out into the cold night air, and the snow that was gently falling. The cab pulled back out into traffic, and a moment later I couldn’t even tell it apart any longer, one cab mixing in with dozens. I was a little early, so I paused outside on the sidewalk and looked up. It was snowing, after all, and I was in New York City. You couldn’t not take a moment to appreciate it.

But you can only stand for so long in the snow before it stops being cinematic and starts being cold. I turned to walk over to the doors when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was a guy getting off a scooter, taking off his helmet, and looking around. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that I knew him. And who else would be wearing a brown leather jacket? “Cary?”

He turned around, and surprise and nervousness seemed to be mingling equally on his face. “Hi,” he said, setting his helmet on his seat and then starting to walk over to me. Then, a second later, he turned back and locked the helmet in the back compartment. He ran his hands through his hair as he walked up to me, and I could see he had changed his jeans for dark pants. The snow was falling on his jacket, on his hair.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. And my first, incandescent thought was that he was somehow there for me. But then a second later I told myself this was ridiculous. He was probably here to catch a train, or meet someone.

“I was hoping to see you,” he said, and I couldn’t quite stop myself from smiling, my heart swelling in my chest like a balloon, threatening to lift me off my feet. “Before you went back home. I just wanted… to talk to you.”

“But how did you know I’d be here?”

“You told me,” he said, giving me a smile. “Eleven-eleven, remember?”