Two weeks after selling all my furniture and another two weeks before quitting my job, I made eyes with a girl at a queer event in West Hollywood. She had long, wavy brown hair with an intense stare to match. We didn’t speak until hours later. It was past midnight.

She had just moved from New York, she said. I didn’t tell her, but I was moving there at the end of the summer. Her stare was no longer intense now as we talked. It was soft, welcoming, curious. But I knew we would be missing each other.

I said it was nice to meet her and promptly left the bar.

When we matched on Tinder days later, it felt almost inevitable.

“Hi!” she wrote. “Did we meet briefly at Hot Flash on Saturday or was this a dream / do you have a twin?”

I looked closely at how she appeared in the light. In her first picture, she stood in a one-piece on a boulder, smiling, a waterfall pummeling behind her. In another, she was on a beach in black workout pants, hair settling in waves at her chest. So much of attraction exists in the realm of the ineffable, but if I had to articulate what drew me to her, the answer might be the image of her smile. She embodied a loveliness, a presence, I was longing for; something I hadn’t found in L.A. — or had lost.

“Not sure if this is a line lol but I’m going to go with yes,” I wrote back. “No twin unfortunately.” We made a plan to find each other not long after during Pride. We stood off to the side at Roosterfish, the same bar where we met. She wore a white frilly shirt and distressed black jorts and loafers. I didn’t hurry off this time.

We continued our conversation over juice the next day, around the corner from the Pride parade at the Butcher’s Daughter. She told me almost offhand what brought her to L.A.: She identified more with the lifestyle here — it was more laid-back, outdoorsy, spacious. And she had ended a long-term relationship in New York.

This didn’t faze me. I knew many people who traversed the L.A.-New York pipeline in both directions. A romantic rupture, or dissatisfaction, wasn’t an uncommon revelation. If I were to look closely at my own reasoning for wanting to leave L.A., I was sure I would discover one too.

By then I was living back at my parents’ house, all my books in storage and anticipating my summer of isolation in the Valley. I told her I was leaving my job days later and then immediately heading to Vermont for a writing residency. And then my summer was, but for my writing and job hunt, free and open. I made no mention of my anticipated move to New York. I wasn’t trying to be deceptive; I think I was trying to be protective. Once you say the thing, you will always have said it. I wasn’t sure what it was I wanted anymore.

“You are lovely,” she texted me that night.

The next weeks passed quickly. I wrote on the East Coast, though I didn’t feel the usual desire to stick around, and I wasn’t sure why. When I returned to L.A., I texted her.

We had a picnic at Barnsdall Art Park days after the Fourth of July. An L.A. native, I had somehow never been to the famed East Hollywood park with its clear-day view of Griffith Observatory. She brought paints, and while I hadn’t painted for over a decade at least, I managed to paint on a note card the fruit she’d laid out: two raspberries and three blueberries. We kissed at the end of the date, but my sunglasses bumped her face and my hair came between our mouths. I moved both out of the way.

“This feels like a rom-com,” she said. I laughed. It was true.

She left the next day for Hawaii, where she had to be for work through August. She sent me pictures of banyan trees, shared her plans to read my favorite book on the beach in the early mornings, told me she was a hopeless romantic: that she believed both in the lightning of connection and the build, not getting broken by it.

I would read her texts and reply from Barnsdall, with a book recommendation of hers in tow, the note card of painted berries as its bookmark, or from the beach. I’ve never been much of a beach person, but I spent a lot of time on the sand that summer, from Santa Barbara and Malibu to Oceanside. I felt a closeness with her there, like I could sense her too looking out beyond the horizon.

Meanwhile, I received an offer for a job that, contrary to my intentions, would be in the L.A. office. If the offer had arrived two months earlier, I wouldn’t have even considered it. Now, I wasn’t sure what to do. I was still interviewing for positions in New York, but I knew I wanted to be around when she returned. I accepted the offer. I would start after Labor Day. I would remain in L.A.

I could only admit the real reason to a select few.

In early August, back in town for a mere 48 hours, she sent me a list of date ideas: a comedy show, a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, cooking dinner at her place. In the end, we opted for a cold plunge and sauna. I’m highly sensitive to (and avoidant of) extreme temperature. The fact I joined her for this activity surprised even me.

“You make me brave,” I told her. She blushed. I meant it.

My entire body shuddered from the cold water, and she helped me out after only 30 seconds. Meanwhile, she stayed submerged for three minutes at a time. Our kiss was longer that day, natural and intuitive. I’d held her face between my hands.

The next time I saw her was the day before Labor Day. She was back from Hawaii for good now. We went to a rooftop screening of “Before Sunrise” at the Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood. She got us a refill of popcorn. She put on lip gloss midway, popped a breath mint, offered me one too. She rested her hand in the space between us. At one point, leaning forward, she turned back to give me a look. I thought I knew what that look meant, but I was wrong.

“I think I may not be ready to let someone in yet romantically,” she texted the next day.

Friendship felt disingenuous. She said she understood.

And the day after that, as planned, I started my job. Her, my reason for doing so, now lost to me — until she wasn’t. I ran into her later that fall in Venice. She was stopped at a red light with the top down. I was walking back from the beach.

I called her name from the sidewalk. She didn’t hear me. I called twice more. She looked up.

“I can’t help but feel like you’re meant to be in my life in some way,” she texted the next morning.

And so we played Rummikub at a restaurant in Laurel Canyon. We sent voice notes as we sat in traffic. We exchanged music, shared a playlist. She drove in a rainstorm to meet me for a Shabbat dinner.

But she still wasn’t able to open her heart, she said, and she couldn’t ask me to wait.

I can’t imagine a world where this is the end. This imagining stems less from a premonition of the future than a feeling of how deeply she has shaped my present. Meeting her reconnected me to something essential within myself and this city I call home. How, even with her gone, I’ve stayed.

The author is a writer from Los Angeles.

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