The poetic heart is not to be trusted with long-term decision-making.
I know all these things. I know them the way I know that Polaris, the North Star, is not actually the brightest star in the sky—it’s the fiftieth.
And still here I am with Daniel in the middle of the sidewalk, on what is almost certainly my last day in America. My fickle, nonpractical, non-future-considering, nonsensical heart wants Daniel. It doesn’t care that he’s too earnest or that he doesn’t know what he wants or that he’s harboring dreams of being a poet, a profession that leads to heartbreak and the poorhouse.
I know there’s no such thing as meant-to-be, and yet here I am wondering if maybe I’ve been wrong.
I close my open palm, which wants to touch him, and I walk on.
ACCORDING TO SCIENTISTS, THERE ARE three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. And, it turns out, each of the stages is orchestrated by chemicals—neurotransmitters—in the brain.
As you might expect, lust is ruled by testosterone and estrogen.
The second stage, attraction, is governed by dopamine and serotonin. When, for example, couples report feeling indescribably happy in each other’s presence, that’s dopamine, the pleasure hormone, doing its work.
Taking cocaine fosters the same level of euphoria. In fact, scientists who study both the brains of new lovers and cocaine addicts are hard-pressed to tell the difference.
The second chemical of the attraction phase is serotonin. When couples confess that they can’t stop thinking about each other, it’s because their serotonin level has dropped. People in love have the same low serotonin levels as people with OCD. The reason they can’t stop thinking about each other is that they are literally obsessed.
Oxytocin and vasopressin control the third stage: attachment or long-term bonding. Oxytocin is released during orgasm and makes you feel closer to the person you’ve had sex with. It’s also released during childbirth and helps bond mother to child. Vasopressin is released postcoitally.
Natasha knows these facts cold. Knowing them helped her get over Rob’s betrayal. So she knows: love is just chemicals and coincidence.
So why does Daniel feel like something more?
THERE ARE EXACTLY NO ITEMS on the list of things I want to do less than go to my interview. And yet. It’s almost eleven a.m., and if I’m going to go to this thing then I need to get gone.
Natasha and I have been walking along in silence ever since The Moment. I wish I could say it’s a comfortable silence, but it isn’t. I want to talk to her about it—The Moment—but who knows if she even felt it. No way does she believe in that stuff.
Midtown Manhattan is different from where we first met. More skyscrapers and fewer souvenir shops. The people act different too. They’re not tourists out for pleasure or shopping. There’s no excitement or gawking or smiling. These people work in these skyscrapers. I’m pretty sure my appointment is somewhere in this neighborhood.
We keep walking and not talking until we get to a giant concrete and glass monstrosity of a building. It amazes me that people spend their entire days inside places like this doing things they don’t love for people they don’t like. At least being a doctor will be better than that.
“This is where I’m going,” she says.
“I can wait for you out here,” I say, like a person who doesn’t have an appointment that will determine his future in just over an hour.
“Daniel,” she says, using the stern voice she’s sure to use on our future children (she’ll definitely be the disciplinarian). “You have an interview and I have this…thing. This is where we say goodbye.”
She’s right. I may not want the future my parents have planned for me, but I don’t have any better ideas. If I stay here much longer, my train will derail from its track.
It occurs to me that maybe that’s what I want. Maybe all the things I’m feeling for Natasha are just excuses to make it derail. After all, my parents would never approve. Not only is she not Korean, she is black. There’s no future here.
That and the fact that my extreme like for her is clearly unrequited. And love is not love if it’s not requited, right?
I should go.
I’m going to go.
I’m getting gone.
“You’re right,” I say.
She’s surprised, and maybe even a little disappointed, but what difference does that make? She has to want this, and clearly she does not.
I WASN’T EXPECTING HIM to say that, and I didn’t expect to feel disappointed, but I do. Why am I thinking about romance with a boy I’ll never see again? My future gets decided in five minutes.
We’re standing close enough to the building’s sliding glass doors that the cool of the air-conditioning washes over my skin as people enter and exit.
He sticks out his hand for a shake but quickly pulls it back. “Sorry,” he says, and blushes. He folds his arms across his chest.
“Well, I’m going,” I say.
“You’re going,” he says, and then neither of us moves.
We stand there not saying anything for another few seconds until I remember I still have his jacket in my backpack. I take it out and watch as he shrugs it back on.
“In that suit, you look like you should work in this building,” I say to him.
I mean it as a compliment, but he doesn’t take it as one.
He tugs at his tie and grimaces. “Maybe I will one day.”
“Well,” I say after more staring-and-not-talking. “This is getting awkward.”
“Should we just hug?”