New York took me on a date.

Remember nights on the beach when you were a kid? It was like being on a deserted island. Like Lord of the Flies, except fun. Maybe it's because I spent my first twelve summers on the beach next to Lake Erie, but the combination of a quiet, breezy night and the smooth sound of water always make me feel like a little girl again.

I am sitting on the ledge of a fountain in midtown, staring at the tourists and the traffic as they pass the Rock and Radio City Music Hall. I just left a couple of friends after seeing a movie together; they went on their respective ways home but I could not bring myself to leave. It was ten o'clock on a breezy, warm night and New York was whispering in my ear,"stay, darling. Stay with me just a little longer."

Here, on this breezy, beachy night by the fountain, a couple is impressed that I can use their digital camera with ease. "I used to do this for a living," I mumble sheepishly. The combined roars of the water behind and the traffic ahead cannot stop this overwhelming feeling of quiet in me. I stroll up to the Mr. Softee truck, purchase a vanilla cone, and nibble at it as I leisurely breathe in the soul of Midtown on a Saturday night. There are clusters of kids walking around, like they had broken from the rest of their class trip for the evening. Gaggles of girls and boys with chaperones, staring up in awe or giggling to each other the way kids do. "I could live here," I think. It's so pleasant, so quiet. I choose not to think about what it's like at five on a Wednesday.

I saunter down W. 50th street and pass the Rainbow Room. I think of my grandmother's picture with her college classmates atop the Empire State Building, all those young women in trenchcoat and heels. I wish I had on a trenchcoat and heels, and a gorgeous dress and a handsome fellow on my arm, like my grandfather, so handsome in that photo on the night they were engaged. I want someone to treat me like a trenchcoat and heels kind of girl. I want someone to just...treat me. I wonder for a moment if my dad would take me out to the Rainbow Room if he were alive. Just the two of us, dining fancy. Dad and his baby. The tourists don't mind the couple of wistful tears trickling down my cheek; they're too busy watching a limousine pull up to the carpet. I don't even bother glancing to see who gets out.

The plaza behind the Rock is like a boardwalk, rife with families and the soft clanging of the hardware on the flags. A few parties dine in the rink restaurant below, but it is mostly empty, watched over by golden Prometheus. A girl somewhere behind me says, "I wish I could ice skate." For just a moment I mistake her voice for my inner monologue.

I curl around the corner at 5th Avenue and nearly miss St. Patrick's Cathedral because of the scaffolding that spans its facade. When I was fourteen I took my first plane ride and visited my sister here for Easter. We made sure to take a picture of St. Patrick's so Mom would think we went to church on Easter Sunday. Tears well up under my lids again; I am overwhelmed with the joy that I live here. I live here. I did it. This place that has awed and inspired me since I was a child is now my home.... New York is my home.

Fifth is like a ghost town; only the occasional group of window shoppers here and there and a few lone pedestrians. The stores are all closed and dark, with the exception of the neon lights in the window at Louis Vuitton, all lit up like a spaceship. Then, like a second brightly lit beacon from another world, I see the cube of the Apple store. It's open twenty-four hours a day and I lost part of my case for my phone... It figures, on a gorgeous night like this, a night that reminds me of the beach on Lake Erie and being a little girl, a night that whispers sweet nothings into my ear... I would wind up in what is for me the adult equivalent of a candy store.

Thanks, New York. I had a great time.