I was standing at the corner of W 37th St, waiting for the traffic light to give me the go on my way to the subway station, thinking about how things went wrong on my date that night with this girl I met at a friend’s party. At first, things had been promising, but it all fell apart when I decided to tell a joke that had worked every single time I told it.

“A few years ago,” I began to say, and she paid attention with a beautiful smile drawn on her perfectly-structured face. “I dated a girl allergic to pineapple. One day — I think when we were dating for six months or so — I really wanted to eat pineapple. The desire possessed me for at least a week, until I could no longer hold myself. One morning, I got up early to go for a run and then went straight to the supermarket and bought a bowl of the most delicious pineapple I had eaten in a long time. Once I’d finished, I forgot about the whole thing and carried on with my day. That afternoon my girlfriend arrived at the apartment and we had sex. I almost killed her.”

At that moment everyone who heard the joke laughed, but my date made a grin of discomfort and said, “I am allergic to peanuts and one day my ex-boyfriend had to take me to the hospital because he ate a bag of peanuts and forgot to tell me about it. That same afternoon we were making love and the reaction was very violent.” That killed the mood for the evening. The worst thing is that I’ve never dated a girl allergic to anything in my life. The joke was only a joke.

I was thinking about her expression — about the discomfort displayed on her face — when I heard someone calling my name with a hint of doubt — as one does when seeing an acquaintance, but is not entirely sure is the right person. The light finally turned red. Instead of crossing the street, I turned to face the person who called me. Standing in front of me was a beautiful woman with long black hair that fell straight to her shoulders, framing a face worthy of a Renaissance painting. Her black eyes smiled at me along with her lips. The first thing to cross my mind was God, how can you make them so beautiful! The second thing was that I knew her, but couldn't place her in my head.

She saw the bewilderment on my face and laughed with an unbridled laughter. “How come I recognized you at first glance, and you can’t recognize me?” She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, arms crossed. Her pose stirred something to the surface of my mind. “It seems to me that the eternal love you once professed had an expiration date after all.” The sound of her voice made everything flood back to me in a violent wave of flashbacks.

“Luna,” I managed to say.

“Wow,” she said, without losing her smile. “You were about to hurt my feelings.”

As we stood on the busy street facing each other, I thought back to my past life. In the twelve years I’d been living in the United States, I had never seen anyone from my past. By the time I crossed the border down in Texas, I had cut every bond in Honduras and decided to restart my life as a new person in a new world. It had been going well until I bumped into Luna — or I should say, until she bumped into me.

The traffic light turned green again — my cue to stay there and talk to her.

While we waited for the red light to stop the traffic again, we talked about how long it had been since we last saw each other — we were fifteen or sixteen. We both disagreed on the last time we met; I was sure it was a week before her departure, and she was completely sure it was the night before she left Honduras. We laughed like fools, only paying attention to each other, yelling details of things that proved each of us right — things I hadn’t thought about in over a decade — while people passed around us.

“Look,” I said. “I know you may have plans, but would you like to go for a coffee or something to catch up properly?”

“I have a couple of hours to kill,” she said, shrugging. “I know the perfect place, close to here.” She turned to tell the girls she was with — whose presence I hadn’t noticed because I was way too focused on her — that she would see them at the party they were going to.

I felt great for a second; not every day a beautiful woman like her left her immediate plans to catch up with a man who used to be her boyfriend when they were kids. Back then, to see her or talk to her, I’d get on my bike every afternoon, pedaling for thirty minutes to her neighborhood. Back then, cell phones were something that only upper middle-class people could afford in a third world country.

Her friends agreed and continued on their way after giving me some curious looks. They were pretty in their own way, but they couldn't match the beauty Luna inherited from her Honduran roots. There are no women in the whole world like Honduran women.

We crossed the street illuminated by the headlights of cars impatient to get on their way and the building lights along the street. She walked gracefully, with a confident ease. “It's amazing how little you’ve changed,” she said.

“You are more beautiful,” I said.

“I know,” she said and laughed. “I'm sorry. Thank you very much. People don’t usually tell me that I’m more beautiful. I think they take for granted that I’ve always looked good, but you know what you’re talking about.”

Luna and I had met in the days of our transition from childhood to adolescence, when I stopped being interested in toy cars and she in Barbie dolls. When I was — without realizing it — focusing my attention on the long legs of girls at school and she stole her older sister's makeup to look prettier. I was thirteen; she was twelve. It was the year 2000, and in Honduras, we were recovering from the aftermath left by Hurricane Mitch, the economy was supported by the American and Korean textile industry, and the presence of the maras was a simple rumor, nothing people worried about in the short term.

I met Luna during an afternoon party organized by the seniors at her school to raise funds for their prom. That afternoon, when I had arrived in my neighborhood, bag full of books and my uniform dirty from playing football at recess, the first person I ran into was my pal, Chino. He told me about the party so I ran home to drop my bag and change my clothes. I told my mother that I had to meet with my study group to do homework, taking my BMX to the meeting point where Chino, Omoa, Galle, and Zurdo were waiting for me. They were all boys older than me, Omoa the oldest at eighteen. We pedaled, feeling the gusts of wind created by the cars that passed us at forty miles per hour.

We left the bicycles in a grocery store near the school; the owner would take care of them for the modest price of five lempiras each. We walked towards the school with our heads up, watching the girls fluttering from here to there like butterflies in a garden. Chino got us into the gymnasium without paying the required tickets; the girl selling them was one of his many preys.

Once inside, we stood at the end near the speakers where the newest reggaeton was loud and clear. The music was good, and while many of the kids danced, we were too preoccupied with playing the role of guys too cool to get caught up in the atmosphere. However, I had a crazy desire to approach two of the girls I liked to invite them to dance. I didn't though because of my own inexperience; I was the youngest of the group and the only one who hadn't kissed a girl in his life.

I saw Luna for the first time when my friends decided they wanted to buy some sodas. I won’t say a lightning bolt struck me when I saw her because the one I liked was her friend. I'm not going to lie, the skinny girl was pretty, she had a sweetness that still glowed in her even on that Saturday night in the streets of New York so many years later, but her friend was already playing in another league. Obviously, I had no chance with her, although I guess Galle thought he did, because the next thing I knew, he was standing next to me, asking me to be his wing-man, which meant I had to distract the other girl, Luna, on his behalf. He took the pretty girl aside and left me there, speechless, nervous, and sweating cold with Luna — who seemed to be having a lot of fun with the situation.

“Do you remember how nervous you were the first time we met?” she asked me as we sat down at the table. The cafe was semi-busy for a Saturday night. We sat away from the noise to talk without interruptions.

“Do you still remember that?” I laughed.

“I remember everything about my childhood, about home,” she said.

“From time to time, I think about those years in Honduras,” she said with a glow in her black eyes. At that moment, I found her the most charming woman I’ve ever met. “Those were good years, full of special memories for me, especially the last three.”

The waiter arrived to save me from my own thoughts. Luna ordered a hot chocolate while I ordered an espresso. “It was surprising to run into you like that, in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea you lived in the States.”

I told her I had eight years living in the country, five of which I had lived in different neighborhoods in New York. I told her — with some embarrassment — that the reason I came to the country was because of a girl I loved. We were together for two years in Honduras and only needed one year living together in Houston to see everything go to hell.

“People change once they get here,” Luna said. “I've seen it a lot. It doesn’t surprise me anymore.”

“I haven’t changed,” I said. “I’m still basically the same person.”

“Maybe you have changed, and you don't know. That’s something that also happens with people.”

“Come on, you know me. You know it would be really difficult to change who I am. I’m pretty much the same person I was back when I was fifteen . . . maybe a little funnier.”

“I don’t know,” she said, wrinkling her nose and looking adorable. “For me, for example, it would be impossible to conceive the idea of you leaving Honduras to follow a girl. No one does that, yet you did.” She laughed and shook her head. “I can’t say that I know you because we were still children when we had our relationship, however many years it was.”

The seed that bore the fruit of our relationship was planted that first time we met, but the thing germinated a couple of weeks later in one of the cliché places in a love story: the bus. I don’t consider myself the romantic type, but I’m a man who knows how to tell when a moment in his life is important. From time to time, I give mental reviews to the chronicle that is my life, especially everything related to women because, whether I like it or not, they all left a mark on me, something indelible that makes them special regardless of the way things ended with each of them. Luna had a special place in my heart because she was the first woman I loved and everything about our relationship happened in the most natural way.

I met her for the second time on a bus, on my way to meet my best friend at the movies. I remember waiting for the bus with some impatience. I remember it stopping and the door opening and the three steps I took to get in. I remember the driver with his hand on the handle that opens and closes the door. I remember the door closing behind me as I paid my fare and turning my body to find a free seat on the back of the bus. And then, all I remember were her black eyes on mine. An explosion expanded within me, starting below my belly button, diluted once it hit my chest; my legs lost their strength, my hands began to sweat, and I’m pretty sure my face gained some color. Luna was alone in her row, sitting by the window as though she was waiting for me the whole time. The sun hitting the bus bathed her, making her matte cinnamon skin glow with a dreamlike light. Her black hair fell in waves to her shoulders, framing a face where her smile didn't seem that of a simple human being but that of an angelic one.

I still don’t know when my feet took me to her. I stood next to her seat, rapt by her presence, and asked her the stupid question of the day, “Is this seat taken?” She smiled and shook her head. If at that point I was not in love with her, I certainly was when I saw the dimples on her cheeks when she smiled.

Even today I don’t understand how I managed to have a normal conversation with her. I’ve never been so nervous in my life before or after that moment.

The first thing I ever did for a woman was ditch my best friend that afternoon to be with Luna in the public library. The library was not remotely close to being one of my favorite places to spend my free time, but there are moments in life when you have to be willing to do something if the reward in the end is invaluable.

Luna and I were together the whole afternoon. We only spent one hour in the library because she couldn’t focus on her homework. The rest of the time we spent walking directionless, going into stores where we tried clothes on for each other’s amusement. It was an exceptional afternoon, crowned with a couple of ice cream cones I bought at a stand outside the city park entrance. In the park, we sat on a bench to talk until it was too late to prolong our escapade. On our way back to the bus station – walking slowly — I took a deep breath to give myself the courage I needed, then I took her hand. It was the first hand I held in my life.

The return trip should have lasted about thirty minutes or so, but I was so lost in my happiness that the journey seemed to last only five minutes. I wanted to continue on the road with her, pass by my neighborhood, and accompany her to the door of her house; I didn't give a damn if that meant that I would have to walk five miles to get home. She saw the struggle on my face and told me she wanted to see me again; she gave me her phone number, kissed me on the lips, and said we were dating. That night I went to bed with a smile I couldn’t remove from my face for more than a week.

“Can you believe that happened almost twenty years ago?” I said.

“Time has passed so quickly, we're old people now,” she said as though she was some ancient creature when she was actually at the peak of her beauty. The tall and squalid teenager I met was long gone; in her place was now an elegant, sophisticated woman that had kept the same smile and dimples of the teenager I loved.

“What’s up?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just don’t know how I didn’t recognize you at first glance when you really haven't changed at all. You’re still the same girl I met on the bus back then — only prettier.”

“And you’re still the same flatterer,” she said, laughing softly.

“We’ve talked a lot about the past. Tell me what’s happened since we broke up,” I asked. She shrugged, disregarding her possible answer, but the truth is that her life had been interesting. When her father decided to expatriate the whole family from Honduras, Luna was just fifteen. The last time I saw her was during her birthday party, which was a farewell to all her friends. Then, she boarded an airplane that took her away from me.

“When we first moved to the country, we lived in San Antonio,” she said, “in the middle of a community of Mexicans. Those were difficult months because adapting to a new culture is never easy, as you may know, especially if you’re a teenager and have no friends to share your feelings with. At the beginning it was mainly hard for my dad. He had to work a lot and went out of the state a lot too.”

“Yeah, I know the drill.”

“Luckily, he found a steady job in a construction company in Dayton, Ohio. So, we moved again. I liked Ohio a lot more than Texas, and it was there where I learned to speak English.”

“What about the boys?”

She smiled that smile that had so many hearts. “What about the boys?”

“Did you forget about me easily?”

“Not really. I had short-lived crushes on some boys at school, but never had the chemistry to get into an actual relationship with any of them. That was the reason I never gave away my virginity to any of them. I guess in some part of my brain I was reserving that part of myself for you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But one day I realized I was one of the few virgins in the entire school, and that was kinda lame. I mean, I was giving sex more importance than it really deserved. I ended up having it for the first time with the most random guy I could find a week before leaving town for college. It was good, but not the life-changing experience everyone made me believe.”

Her greatest dream since she’d moved to American was to live in New York City — it was unimportant if it was the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens; although, her final aspiration was to live in Manhattan. With that goal in mind, she had sent her college application to study business at Columbia and NYU. The rejection letter from Columbia hurt, but the smile at her acceptance from NYU for the next fall was enough. There, she met the man she considered her second boyfriend — a guy from Seattle, who was fascinated by Luna's beauty.

“But he was too damn jealous and possessive,” she told me. “I’m a woman with a high sense of independence. I’m willing to fight tooth and nail for it if needed. And he couldn’t deal with that. The next time I started dated someone, I put all my cards on the table. I’m a woman who knows what I want. But none of them ever knew how to deal with the freedom I gave them and expected in return.”

“Did you only date Americans?”

“No. I dated Latinos too, but they’re the worst," she said.

“Come on, we can’t all be so bad. Surely you never dated a Honduran.”

“My husband is Honduran,” she said quite naturally. I could hear inside me how my rising expectations were crushed. “He’s the only one who knows how to deal with me.”

“You’re married?” I said in my best casual voice, trying to recover from the news.

“Yeah, for two years now,” she said. The husband was a Sampedran, a man ten years older than her. She met him when the law firm she works for hired his company to do the remodeling of the new floor they had rented due to a planned extension. At first, she didn’t pay him the slightest attention, but one day the guy had the nerves to approach her office with no other excuse than to ask her out. She accepted because he made her laugh after he introduced himself – his name was Andrés. They were both from the same state in Honduras and Luna always felt an almost childlike nostalgia when she met people from her country.

On that first date, he showed her how relaxed and funny he was. Most importantly, he made the conversation about her, by asking her many questions about her life, which worked perfectly because Luna always found pleasure in being the center of attention. They went out a few more times and he never pressed her in any way. From the first date, she expected him to invite her to his place so she could refuse the idea to see how committed he was to win her over, but the invitation never came and eventually it was Luna who ended up inviting Andrés to her apartment.

Things happened so naturally that one day Luna found herself thinking she hadn’t even put her cards on the table. A short time later, Andrés got on one knee and asked the million-dollar question. She did not respond immediately; she needed to meditate on the whole situation and its outcome. She didn’t love him — she knew perfectly well what love was — but she did like him enough to learn how to love him in time. He made her feel good and safe. He made her laugh — which was more than many of her friends had in their marriages—and the sex was good. He had made it clear with actions that he was a good man, and she knew that it was more than unlikely that she would find a good man in a city like New York.

“The relationship is good,” she said, “the life together is good, and we both want the same things, for now.”

Outside, the city kept breathing as it always did and inside the cafe people began to leave. “We never have big fights,” she said and smiled. “However, if I’m honest with you, Andy lets me get away with things all the time. I’m master and commander in our marriage.” She laughed with the musical laughter I remembered from so long ago. “But enough about me, tell me about you, what happened to you and —” The ringtone of her cell phone interrupted her question. She answers the call and I wince a bit at the high-pitch of her friends’ voices. The conversation lasted less than a minute.

“Time flies,” Luna said as she put the cellphone back into her purse. “I'm sorry I have to go, but I don't want to end our conversation this way. Can you give me your phone number?”

I gave it to her without thinking twice.

We stood up to hug and say goodbye; she kissed me on the cheek before leaving the cafe. I watched her walk away and disappear from my sight while I stood in front of the cashier, waiting for the girl on the other side of the counter to charge my bill. As I watched her struggling with the computer software — and blushing with embarrassment in the process — my mind reviewed the events that developed in the last hours.

I still couldn’t believe that the woman I had had my date with before Luna found me hadn’t laughed at the pineapple joke. The date with her had been exceptional until the moment I told the joke. Hell, if I hadn’t told the stupid joke, maybe the date with her would still have been going on and I wouldn't have seen Luna. If I was reading the signs correctly, then the joke put something better in front of me, something that could promise better things. If the signs were correct — and I thought they were — Luna and I were destined to meet that night. She was married, yes, but in all the time we talked she never mentioned her husband in depth nor did she let me know how much she loved him. No, all the time we talked it was about us and our relationship when we were teens. I was her first boyfriend and that had to count for something.

I paid for the drinks and left the cafe. Standing alone in front of the window, I couldn’t help but think how pathetic it was for me to have shared the night with two beautiful women and not ended it with either of them in my apartment. I started walking towards the corner where Luna and I met, when we almost collided with each other.

“Good,” she said, almost breathless. “I thought you were gone.”

I don’t exaggerate when I say that an irresistible desire to kneel and shout thanks to God for the new opportunity almost overcame me.

“Look,” she continued, “I’m going to a friend’s birthday party, and I know perfectly well that I’m going to die of boredom in that place with the pretentious idiots who are her friends. I know you may have plans and stuff for the rest of the night, but would you like to come with me?”

“So I can die of boredom by your side?” I said. She laughed.

“I didn’t want it to be so obvious, but yes,” she said, giving me one of those heartwarming smiles. I gave her my arm and she held onto it, amused.

There’s this thing that happens in movies all the time when two lovers find each other: they would walk aimlessly, spellbound with each other, perhaps only aware of the city and its fascinating energy as their senses rebuild that physical trust they once knew. As we walked to her friend’s party I felt as if trapped in déjà vu, fighting this unbearable urge to hold her hand in mine the entire time, unable to keep my cool because I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was actually there with me, the sound of her voice was coming to my ears, the overwhelming quality of her beauty was filling my retinas, the smell of her perfume was getting me high, altering my brain chemistry.

I needed to record everything about this night: the people walking and talking around us, minding their business as we minded our own, the noise of the traffic going up and down the street, the horns of countless cars honking into the void of the night, the brownstones’ windows lit in yellows and whites, matching with the lights illuminating our path filled with shadows created by the trees decorating in green the colorless sidewalks of good old New York. I needed to save everything in my memory: the yellow cabs and their angry drivers, the guy jogging with his head covered by huge headphones completely lost within himself, the girl walking in front of us holding her phone before her to take a selfie she would later post on Instagram, the group of friends gathered in front of the bar on the other side of the street engaged in conversation and chain-smoking, and the fact that these four specific details of the night took place when her hand brushed mine during our walk.

We arrived at a brownstone building looking exactly like the rest of the buildings on the street. Luna directed me through the stairs up to the third floor and to the door where the laughter and the noise of conversations came from. We entered the apartment with my mind working as fast as it could, trying to crack the meaning of my presence in that place. Why did Luna come back for me when the easiest thing to do would’ve been to meet again another day when we had more time to catch up? Even as a teenager with wild hormones running through my body, I had tried not to create false expectations related to women. I kept doing the same as an adult, but all the signs were there, and they told me that Luna was as hooked on me as I was with her. I didn’t want to overthink her motives; I didn’t need to know them, as to be there with her was more than enough. I was her first love, and she could never forget me despite all the time that had elapsed. Sure, she was married. She might even be happily married, but a woman’s heart is filled with contradictions. I decided to stop thinking about it and let go of questions that would only ruin the fun.

Luckily, the party’s atmosphere was relaxed and everyone seemed to be having a good time. The music was good and the drinks were strong. Luna's friends cornered us and began shooting so many questions. They were morbidly curious about my history with Luna. They smiled the whole time we told them and laughed like hyenas when I told them about my failed date and the joke that caused the reunion with Luna.

“It’s the work of destiny,” one of them said seriously.

Luna laughed at the remark, but inside I hoped it was true. They managed to get from me — in a clever way — personal information that I would only have liked to share with Luna in the privacy of my bed. I told them my reasons for moving to the United States, and how those reasons ceased to be important when my girlfriend and I broke up. I’d then decided to keep it simple and hopped from bed to bed– women in Houston, to New Orleans then Jacksonville, and finally Brooklyn.

“And you've been single all this time?” another one asked, looking at me with calculating eyes. I said no. To lie was pointless, especially because I didn’t care much about that part of my life. “In Jacksonville, I married a Cuban woman who found it extremely exciting to sleep with other men even while married. I mean, the marriage itself was a mere joke. We were very good friends and she just wanted an excuse to avoid getting serious with the different men she dated and who ended up falling in love with her. Every time one of them wanted to take things to the next level, she told them that she loved me, that I gave meaning to her life, and she would never break my heart.” Luna and her friends were fascinated with the story and didn’t blink as they listened to me. “We were more roommates than husband and wife. We both were dating different people at the same time; sometimes we even sat at the kitchen table to have breakfast together with our lovers. Sometimes we had seasons in which neither of us were in the mood for other people, and we put our marriage vows into practice.”

“So you guys did have sex?!” said Luna.

“Yeah, but at the end of the day it was only sex. Everything happened naturally and usually the initiative was hers.”

“I don't know if I’d be capable of doing something like that,” Luna said.

“If you can detach yourself from the sense of possession — which is what leads to jealousy and the given suffering — and you decide that what you want is to have fun, then everything is possible,” I said. “Eventually, she met a man she fell in love with, and we got divorced. She stayed in Jacksonville, and I came to try my luck here in New York. We’re still good friends — just from a distance.”

Luna received a new phone call and walked away from us. I saw her leave the room through an open door onto the balcony. When I finally satisfied her friends’ curiosity, they left me alone. I went after her and found her contemplating the beauty of the city at night. I stood by her side.

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” she said, smiling.

It’s now or never, I thought. I circled her waist with my left arm and brought her to me to kiss her. When my mouth searched for hers, it found her open palm. I froze.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a tone that left no room for doubt. “What the fuck! Did you forget that I’m married?”

I was stunned, frozen like a statue, disoriented by my own stupidity. “I’m sorry,” I babbled. “I got confused with the signs you were sending me.”

“Signs? What are you, still fifteen?” she said. She turned away from me with her face red and went back into the apartment, furious.

Did I stand there — with the city as background — thinking on how I made a big fool of myself? Hell no. Of course not. The human being will never be exempt from committing errors in judgment — men above all; we are very fucking stupid, especially when it comes to things of the heart.

* * *

The next time we met was exactly four months later on the 1 Line. I got on it at Dyckman Street that Thursday afternoon on my way to the Bronx. I saw her at the end of the car. It was impossible to overlook her, to ignore her shiny black hair tied in a ponytail, her perfect features exposed to the admiration of anyone who had eyes. I waited for her reaction as she saw me. God, she looked as gorgeous as she did that last Thursday night lost in time. The effect she had on me remained the same.

I was still standing in the car when the train began its crawl; she took her briefcase from the seat and put it on her lap, leaving the space next to her free. It took me ten steps to reach her. I sat next to her without saying a single word, with nothing but a smile on my face; she smiled weakly as well. Mine said, “I knew we would meet again” and hers said, “I can't believe this is happening.” I enjoyed just being in her presence, wondering if I should touch her hand. It was right there within my grasp. So I did. She just laughed and shook her head.

“Don’t tell me I’m misreading this,” I said.

She shrugged and squeezed my hand before letting it go. Maybe the only choice she had was to let go.