I often walked home from work to save the two-dollar-and seventy-five-cent subway fare and to get in a free workout. Though I told Lena I belong to the Equinox on Broadway and the Tracy Anderson on 59th, a gym was a luxury I couldn’t afford yet. When I walk, I watch strangers’ apartments like their windows are TV screens into an HBO drama. The couple eating dinner on their four-by-two balcony are trying to get pregnant and just had yet another disappointing negative test. The bright cartoon emanating from the fourth-floor corner are two kids being distracted by a teenage babysitter whose boyfriend is coming over later to fuck her in the rich couple’s bed. The twinkle lights on a penthouse’s terrace belong to a lonely woman reading Elin Hilderbrand and waiting for her husband to return from a business trip.

I wondered what people thought about me—the girl sitting on her fire escape every night, drinking from an eleven-dollar bottle of wine, swiping through Lena’s Instagram like she was a celebrity I was desperate to one day meet.

I’d been nervous that my You’ve Got Mail selection put a wrench in the friendship I hoped would have blossomed after our coffee date. She did say that I was paying for the next round, which meant there would be a next round, a shrivel of hope that kept me going when two weeks passed without Lena saying more than a handful of words to me. She said good morning once, but Kelsi, my bootlicker desk mate whose phony smile was plastered on her face even when I caught her crying in the bathroom, responded before I could. Lena complimented my Golden Goose sneakers as she passed my desk once, but she was gone before I could come up with a catchy way to say thank you. I wore those shoes every day after that.

I wanted to keep my head down, give her space, not seem like a needy follower desperate for her friendship, but it was hard. I couldn’t tell if I needed to initiate the next interaction since she instigated the first. Lena seemed like the kind of person who was always in charge, who led the group and made the reservations and decided who her friends would be.

I had started to wonder if maybe those are traits she likes in a friend, too, until one day at 7:00 p.m. Lena moseyed over to my desk and asked to grab a drink.

“There’s a new bar opening in SoHo,” she had said, standing over me. “A friend from college is the mixologist and there’s a soft opening tonight.”

I’d go wherever she needed me to. Especially when that thing involved college friends.