It started with a notification.
Not a call — he was never the kind of man who calls. A message, which already told me he'd written it several times before sending. He does that. I know all his patterns. That's the problem.
Few months of silence, and then: "Hey. I've been thinking about San Sebastián. You'd love it. Come with me."
No preamble. No apology. Just him, arriving back into my life like a very attractive weather system — all pressure and electricity and the faint promise of something that would probably leave a mess.
Here's what I should tell you about him: he's the kind of person who makes ordinary things feel romantic. Dinner becomes a declaration. A walk becomes a scene from a film you've seen too many times to trust but keep watching anyway. He is extraordinarily good at beginnings. It's the rest he struggles with.
I knew this. I had known this for years, assembled from evidence and heartbreak and one particularly definitive moment last year where I finally, conclusively, fell out of love with him — or so I told myself every time he crossed my mind, which was less often than it used to be, which I counted as a victory.
And then: three lines. No punctuation errors.
I ran the calculations. The grand romantic gesture that burns white-hot for a weekend and then slowly, gently, expertly withdraws. I know what I'm getting into. I have a whole architecture of reasons this is a bad idea.
It was, objectively, a terrible idea.
I booked it anyway. #FIBI
What followed was great food, clarity, confusion, and, fine.. great sex.
I had arrived with my walls up — genuinely, carefully constructed. I stayed quiet when I wanted to speak. I chose the window seat on the drive so I could look at the ocean instead of him. I was doing so well.
Then he took me to a jazz club.
He knew what jazz means to me. He'd remembered — filed it away somewhere in that infuriating memory of his — and said nothing, just led me through a door and down some stairs, into a room that smelled like warm wood and old music. My father loved jazz. I don't talk about that easily. He knew anyway.
Did he?
What I do know is that the minute he left me at the airport I started crying my eyes out.
I went home, made myself a mezcalita, and went out to get drunk enough to stop thinking about it.
Was it a solution?
No.
But at least I was drinking my sadness instead of texting it.
Will I do it again? Yes. Probably.
Welcome to my very considered, extremely reckless Pays Basque edition.
One anchovy at a time.
It started with a notification.
Not a call — he was never the kind of man who calls. A message, which already told me he'd written it several times before sending. He does that. I know all his patterns. That's the problem.
Few months of silence, and then: "Hey. I've been thinking about San Sebastián. You'd love it. Come with me."
No preamble. No apology. Just him, arriving back into my life like a very attractive weather system — all pressure and electricity and the faint promise of something that would probably leave a mess.
Here's what I should tell you about him: he's the kind of person who makes ordinary things feel romantic. Dinner becomes a declaration. A walk becomes a scene from a film you've seen too many times to trust but keep watching anyway. He is extraordinarily good at beginnings. It's the rest he struggles with.
I knew this. I had known this for years, assembled from evidence and heartbreak and one particularly definitive moment last year where I finally, conclusively, fell out of love with him — or so I told myself every time he crossed my mind, which was less often than it used to be, which I counted as a victory.
And then: three lines. No punctuation errors.
I ran the calculations. The grand romantic gesture that burns white-hot for a weekend and then slowly, gently, expertly withdraws. I know what I'm getting into. I have a whole architecture of reasons this is a bad idea.
It was, objectively, a terrible idea.
I booked it anyway. #FIBI
What followed was great food, clarity, confusion, and, fine.. great sex.
I had arrived with my walls up — genuinely, carefully constructed. I stayed quiet when I wanted to speak. I chose the window seat on the drive so I could look at the ocean instead of him. I was doing so well.
Then he took me to a jazz club.
He knew what jazz means to me. He'd remembered — filed it away somewhere in that infuriating memory of his — and said nothing, just led me through a door and down some stairs, into a room that smelled like warm wood and old music. My father loved jazz. I don't talk about that easily. He knew anyway.
Did he?
What I do know is that the minute he left me at the airport I started crying my eyes out.
I went home, made myself a mezcalita, and went out to get drunk enough to stop thinking about it.
Was it a solution?
No.
But at least I was drinking my sadness instead of texting it.
Will I do it again? Yes. Probably.
Welcome to my very considered, extremely reckless Pays Basque edition.
One anchovy at a time.
