There are plenty of places in the neighborhood where I work—and, if all goes as planned, soon to be my home neighborhood where I live—to bring a date.

This isn’t one of them. But this also isn’t a date, I don’t think.

I don’t know how to define it, but it feels like a major life event that doesn’t really need to have a name.

It’s just me meeting Maddie—meeting her at my favorite spot to get coffee and maybe a sandwich. Because my life isn’t a date-friendly sushi place on Stone Street or something. My life is getting a cup of coffee right here on Broadway, and that’s what I want to share with Maddie.

As for now, I’m still by myself, as I’ve been probably every time I’ve come here. It’s just me at a table with a paper coffee cup and my big-ass phone plugged in to the outlet behind my chair.

I’m also usually not here on fucking Saturday either, and the crowd is decidedly more touristy than usual, with small bands of Midwesterners and German tour groups nervously looking at brochures for the Liberty Island ferries.

Most of the tables are still empty, which is the way I like it. It’s been a long fucking week since getting back, especially living a forty-minute ride up the 1 train line, in the same place, the same bedroom where Audra was sending my possessions out the window not too long ago.

It’s been hard to sleep right there. I’m glad I won’t be living through any more of those days anytime soon and that Audra stopped texting and calling again.

Imagine if I ever actually ended up signing that marriage license. Christ.

Between one and two, that was our decided meeting time. It’s just past one now, and I don’t know what train Maddie’s on. If she did take the Acela, it probably shouldn’t get held up too much.

I know better than to try to give her advice on the fastest way to get downtown from Penn. She’ll decide she wants to walk for all I fucking know.

I’m usually not the person waiting, which is one reason that this doesn’t seem like a date, and I’m considering actually checking my phone—another first.

I do check to see if there are any calls or texts, and there aren’t. I knew that already since the volume’s jacked all the way up. Plus, any call or text from Maddie would come with its own ringtone: “Sleepwalk” by Santo and Johnny.

The iconic, excessively Hawaiian-sounding slide guitar melody will sure sound nice ringing out in the middle of this cafe, but the sight of Maddie walking in from the crowded sidewalk would be even better.

I don’t know why it’s starting to feel like a foolish fantasy that either of those things could happen, seeing as how it’s still barely past one, but I’m still compelled to open my phone’s browser and got to amtrak.com to look at the Acela schedule and the regular Northeast Corridor schedule. There are trains getting in pretty much hourly, but it means pretty much nothing.

There are more fucking crowds forming. Big, naive families with pungent, foil-wrapped sandwiches and bottles of water filling up more tables than I would ever see taken on a weekday morning, ferry ticket sellers taking a break with big energy drink cans, couples on vacation together, possibly their honeymoon…

This shit is getting me out of sorts. By the time one-thirty rolls around, which feels like some definitive halfway point, I have too much of this dumb, nervous energy to keep sitting. I get up for a coffee refill, which may not be the best idea in light of the line forming to get into the single restroom.

Gladly channeling some energy by standing up and moving, I take the longest I may have ever taken to let the coffee fill my cup gradually from the dispenser, to choose a sweetener, to pick up the skim milk carton, look at it, to decide to go with half and half, no, whole milk, to stir it like I’m in the kitchen at fucking Del Posto or something, trying to painstakingly mingle a ragù to life without rushing it—all taking what probably amounts to not more than five or ten more minutes before I have no choice but to go back to my seat while it’s still open.

One forty-five. I’m not used to worrying about the time, or much else for that matter. I’m back at my little table, trying to act relaxed and casual.

Not that I give a shit what anyone here thinks. That’s mostly so I’m not an overbearingly anxious wreck when Maddie arrives.

If she arrives? Not a thought worth fucking tormenting myself over right now.

By two, the weirdly maddening lunch crowd starts thinning out. It’s also two, though. Time to send a quick text.

Just one.

Hey, which train are you on? I can send a car to pick you up.

I regret hitting send almost immediately. If I’m worried about being overbearing, that may not be a good place to start.

Then again, it’s not crazy to ask for some kind of update.

Two-fifteen. I’m well into my next cup of coffee. My text was delivered but not answered.

Maybe she’s on the subway. She must be.

I watch the crowds outside. It’s going to be weird to see Maddie here, in the concrete wilderness, thousands of miles from the idyllic paradise I associate with her. It’ll surely be weird for her to see me here as well.

I watch the waves of tourists ebb and flow outside. I wish she didn’t have to fight these fucking crowds.

Two-thirty. It’s like I’m on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and I only have one lifeline left: a fucking phone call.

I unplug my phone from the wall, look at my stupid text to Maddie one more time, and emphatically hit the button to dial her number.

Her phone rings, meaning she’s not in the subway. It rings some more.

And then I hear Maddie’s voice, not saying hello, but asking me to kindly leave a message.

Fucking voicemail. I hang up. This is not as flamboyant a message as throwing lamps and shit out my window, but to me, the message is just as clear: time to give up.

I unplug the charger from the wall and start getting ready to finally leave, when I hear the dulcet slide guitar tones of Santo and Johnny ring divinely through my phone’s speaker.

The charger just drops from my hand to the floor, and I see a new text message on my phone screen with the name Madeline displayed above it boldly.