When you said you were texting your mother, I didn’t believe you. I’ve met your mother. The three of us went out for coffee on a Wednesday afternoon. Maybe you don’t remember. I don’t expect you to. We watched as she pulled up. She rose from her miniature car with the grace of a North Atlantic sea lion—cumbersome but purposeful. We watched her turn around and fiddle with the keys.

We saw her face change when she realized that she had locked her purse in the car. You narrated as she spent five full minutes attempting to open the car door. There was so much for her to do and you to say. She pressed the panic button (probably by mistake), and a muted siren could barely be heard over the light-alternative-indie-rock emanating from a speaker overhead. Her alarm sounded as if it were oceans or blocks away. No one from the coffee shop noticed. A man in the parking lot wearing a sleeveless American flag t-shirt helped her, took her keys, retrieved her purse—knowing full well that she was no old-lady-auto-thief. You provided his portion of the dialogue as well. She touched him on the arm and mouthed the words “Thank you.” In all likelihood she actually said these words, but from behind the plate glass window she was only a picture show. “It’s a new car,” you said. “She bought it yesterday.” The three of us drank coffee and smiled. I knew that at any point in the conversation if I asked her whether or not she knew my name, she’d get it wrong. She’d guess, but she’d be wrong.

When you said you were texting your mother, I thought about how cruel you can be and how the coffee that we are now drinking tastes like cigarette ash. I know I love you. I do love you. I’ve just spent months and moments seeing you on the other side of a plate glass window. I miss sitting next to you. I miss you.