Finally, the Love Story I Was Waiting For

This story is the latest in my series on relationships for paying subscribers. It is romantic, intimate, touching, and true. I hope that you will enjoy it.

It was the beginning of summer, and there was a heat wave in Lisbon, and swifts were keening dryly in the blue sky, and I was shuffling up and down the dusty hills, and I was at loose ends. All of my friends had made their summer plans, but I had made none. I had come tumbling out of a relationship three months before in a way that left me feeling bruised, deflated, and uninspired. I was feeling self-protective, living a quiet life alone with my turtle, keeping a low profile, going out little. A stuffy and arid life.

And then one day, I received an invitation that would change the climate completely.

My friend Elizabeth and I were having one of our video calls, the ones we had been doing monthly since the pandemic. It was the end of June, and she was in the US, and she was on holiday, and I was in Portugal doing nothing, and she knew how I was feeling. She also had a relationship debacle in her recent past. She asked me a question.

“Do you have plans for July?”

“No, not really... Not at all, actually.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t feel... I don’t know.”

“Let’s meet in Paris.”

“Meet in Paris? But I was just there.”

“So? This time you would be there with me.”

“Go to Paris with you?”

“You’re getting it.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“I don’t... I mean, I’ve just been feeling kind of...”

“I know. Look, you need to do something. Buy a ticket to Paris in mid-July.”

“For how long?”

“A few days.”

“Would we...stay together?”

“Perhaps. Would you like that?”

“Yes. Yes, I think I would.”

And so I bought a ticket to Paris.