It was June, and the heat in the city was heavy, the kind that makes everything feel slow and deliberate. You lived on the third floor, and I was on the second, and for three months, we were the only two people in the world who existed at 7:00 PM.

We never actually went into each other’s apartments. We just stood on our respective balconies, leaned against the black iron railings, and talked as the sky turned from orange to deep, bruising violet. We talked about everything—the books we’d never finish, the music that made us lonely, the way the train sounded at 2 AM.

I think I fell in love with you somewhere between the fourth and fifth sunset. I fell in love with the way you tucked your hair behind your ear when you were thinking, and the way you always had a half-finished glass of wine that you’d forget to drink.

Then September came. The air got sharp, and the sun started setting earlier, before I even got home from work. One day, the balcony above mine was empty. No wine glass, no books, no you. I found a note taped to my mailbox the next morning. It just said, "The summers are for dreaming, but the winters are for moving on."

I still look up at the third floor every evening at 7:00 PM. The new person who lives there keeps their blinds closed. They don't know that for one summer, that balcony was the center of my universe.