It was 2 p.m. on a Saturday in early January when I drove to Silver Lake to pick up a table from Facebook Marketplace.<\/p>\n
It was one of those dramatic Los Angeles afternoons when the sky had darkened early and rain felt inevitable. I had been searching for a Midcentury Modern table for my new apartment, 33 floors above downtown L.A. After a year in Long Beach, I was moving again, trying for a clean beginning after the traumatic end of a nine-year relationship.<\/p>\n
Facebook Marketplace pickups aren\u2019t supposed to be intimate. You arrive, look the thing over, act a little indifferent, maybe negotiate, then hand over cash or Venmo the seller and leave. I had already decided to offer $700, a hundred less than the seller was asking.<\/p>\n
But when I walked toward the house, the first thing I noticed was the woman waiting outside. She was Korean, in her 30s and pretty in a way that didn\u2019t announce itself. And then she said my name correctly.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuy?\u201d<\/p>\n
Not \u201cWee.\u201d Not \u201cHuey.\u201d Not the small pause people make before deciding they don\u2019t want to try.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuy.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was such a small thing, but I noticed. I had spent my whole life hearing people get my name wrong.<\/p>\n
She led me inside, and I glanced at the table. Clean lines. Warm wood. Exactly what I had been looking for. Within minutes, we were no longer talking about furniture. Somehow we were talking about life transitions and grief.<\/p>\n
I told her that I was moving to downtown L.A. after a brief stay in Long Beach and years living in West L.A. I needed a reprieve from something I had gone through.<\/p>\n
She told me she was selling as much as she could because she was thinking of leaving L.A. and moving back to Orange County. She was in the middle of a breakup, and her ex was moving out that weekend.<\/p>\n
There we were: two strangers in Silver Lake, surrounded by furniture being sold off piece by piece, both trying to make new lives from the remains of our old ones.<\/p>\n
And then, because apparently I no longer know what is normal to say during a Facebook Marketplace transaction, I told her, \u201cYeah, I just got out of a nine-year relationship. It ended in total chaos \u2014 legally, emotionally, all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at me the way anyone should look at a man who had come to buy a table and somehow ended up revealing a past he was still trying to heal from.<\/p>\n
Concerned. Curious. Alert.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that sounds intense,\u201d I said, half-laughing. \u201cThere\u2019s context. I promise. I\u2019ve been telling the story in the L.A. storytelling circuit, and it recently became a podcast episode.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was either a red flag or a very Los Angeles credential, depending on the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
She asked for the episode. I sent it to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, wow,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re like a mini-celebrity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d I said sheepishly. \u201cI guess you could say that.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time I loaded half the table into my car, I had forgotten all about my plan to negotiate. I paid the full $800. The other half wouldn\u2019t fit, so I asked if I could come back the following week. Before I left, I told her to listen to the podcast and let me know what she thought.<\/p>\n
The next day, she texted. She had listened and said she could empathize with so much of what I had shared.<\/p>\n
A week later, I returned for the other half of the table. By then, I was no longer just the guy from Facebook Marketplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t believe you endured something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she said, \u201cIf you\u2019re ever around and want to grab a drink, that\u2019d be cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t hear it as a romantic invitation exactly. I had been through too much to know what to do with ambiguity.<\/p>\n
But it moved me. Not because I thought, \u201cOh, this woman wants me.\u201d More because I had handed a stranger one of the most vulnerable parts of my life, and she didn\u2019t step away. She opened a door.<\/p>\n
A few days later, I got a text from an acquaintance I hadn\u2019t spoken to in years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWere you recently on Facebook Marketplace? Did you buy a table from Michelle?\u201d<\/p>\n
He and Michelle were close friends. She had told him about meeting an anesthesia provider who did sound baths in the operating room and had been on a podcast. Stranger still, he knew the friends who had taken me in after everything fell apart \u2014 people who had become part of the story I told in the podcast.<\/p>\n
Because this is Los Angeles, where everyone is anonymous until suddenly everyone is connected.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I took Michelle up on her invitation.<\/p>\n
We met at Thank You Coffee in Chinatown and sat outside. She brought her dog, a small, rambunctious golden doodle who kept moving around under the table. I ordered a third-wave coffee from China, which I didn\u2019t even know existed. Then we walked to a pastry shop and picked up a few things to share.<\/p>\n
She had a slight lisp, and I remember thinking how specific her voice felt. How real she was, sitting there in the middle of her own life coming apart.<\/p>\n
At some point, I asked what made her want to have coffee with me.<\/p>\n
She told me her ex was a public defender, and he had shared stories about the lives people carry beneath the facts of their cases. She said it taught her that you can\u2019t judge a book by its cover.<\/p>\n
With the podcast episode out, I worried people would hear the worst part first and decide they already knew me. But Michelle didn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n
Sitting there outside Thank You Coffee, I felt something in me soften. I could sit with someone new and tell the truth. I could listen to her tell the truth back. And for the first time in a while, I could feel my heart open without needing to turn the moment into a future.<\/p>\n
By the time the table was in my apartment, 33 floors above downtown Los Angeles, I wondered if that was what I had been doing all along \u2014 seeing if I still believed in beginnings.<\/p>\n
Maybe that was too much to ask of a table. Or a woman I met in Silver Lake. Or one coffee in Chinatown. But something had shifted. Michelle was not the answer. I\u2019m not even sure there was a question. She was just a woman who said my name correctly, listened to a story I was afraid would make me untouchable and stayed curious.<\/p>\n
And maybe, for now, I could too.<\/p>\n
The author is a certified registered nurse anesthetist at UCLA Medical Center. He lives in downtown L.A. He\u2019s on Instagram: @polycrna<\/a>.<\/p>\n L.A. Affairs<\/a> chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com<\/a>. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here<\/a>. <\/p>\n