April 12, 2014

This time we were in New York. It was sunny as we checked out of our hotel at noon. We walked. A lot. Barefoot. Just the two of us, we walked over bridges nonstop. We took off our shoes earlier and put them in a basket that I was carrying.

After many hours of walking, I was a bit unsure of our location. Night had already fallen. I think we wanted to head to the airport, but it was no longer appearing on the signs overhead.

“Hey, are we still going in the right direction?” I asked.

“Yeah, we should be. The airport is right around there. I went there earlier with my dad.” She pointed somewhere in the 2 o’ clock direction.

There weren’t any lights over there but we didn’t have any other ideas so we continued walking forward. Eventually the bridges stopped and we were now in an open plaza area. Many people were buzzing around. It seemed like it was dinner time.

I felt something from my phone so I took it out to check what it was. I received a text message from someone I barely knew saying “Thanks.” I’m not sure what it was for.

I checked my watch. Apparently it was nearing midnight now. We had walked for nearly 12 hours. She pointed to a restaurant behind us and asked “Do you want to eat together?”. I said yes but I wasn’t really sure why that was even a question. We had just walked through the entire city together, why wouldn’t we share dinner?

It seemed like she was hungry as she was attempting to drag me towards the restaurant. But I felt like there was something to be done before we went to eat.

“Don’t rush me or I might forget something!” My stubborn self had risen up again, refusing to move until my thoughts got sorted out. “Hey, where are our shoes?” I posed.

Both of us went into a short moment of panic as we remembered we were both barefoot. After a minute or two of racking our brains it all felt a bit silly as we found both pairs in the basket I was holding all along.