I

I

t’s complicated to realice in which moment you started to feel interested about someone you met years ago. Not just the moment you felt attracted to him, but the moment you felt there was something different about it. Sometimes it gets more complicated if the reflection runs looking for the time in which that person started thinking about you. When, when, when...? Does it happen little by little without noticing, like it happens in some movies? I’m willing to believe that it suddenly happens. Since the very beginning, right when we met, or just in the moment when you both decide to step forward. I don’t think there are more options.

I would like to think it was since the beginning in my history, that autumn afternoon which I was waiting for my parents to finish working. Both of them administrate Sánchez&Herráez, the most important law firm of Salamanca, settled in the main avenue. I loved the light brown stoned building, traditional from the town. Their law firm occupied the whole grown floor and the first level of the building. Lawyer’s offices looked at the street but, I discovered a blind side where they couldn’t watch whom was I expecting them, so I would stay out of trouble. I didn’t use to get up there; there was not much to do, and I had to sit somewhere anyway to wait for my parents to condescend and say hi. If it would be some entertainment up there... But I rather staying down, I didn’t feel pleasure for being forced to greet the bad face lawyers who worked with my parents, they only asked me about school, just concerned for my taste on law school -why would I want to study something so boring?- And they effor on bother me in a disgusting manner. No, I better stay far from the jacket-clad environment they had inside.

That day, my boyfriend came along with me. Mario, the guy I’ve been dating for few months. Blonde hair, bowl cut, it was the fashion at that time and it drives all the girls crazy. Light eyes –gray I think, but I can’t recall, too many years have gone already– and a bit taller than me, with a body that says I train every week for hours in the gym. He was an eye-catching guy. That’s why I was dating him, not for being smart, he wasn’t... Well, we were waiting in the blind side for my parents to go out, and he was carrying my bag –of course-. He refused to hold my folder. “I’ll look gay with so many guys pasted to it”. You see, he concerned about the decoration of a folder! Sexual identity problems or something, it looks like.

As I was saying, I was waiting with Mario for my parents to go out while we discuss about the folder issue, when I saw a guy younger than thirty leaving the law firm. A bit taller than me, brown curly hair and he had a demeanor I had never seen in my life. He was walking very serious although people around him were laughing about something they were saying. You know I didn’t use to like men in suit but, that guy was carrying his black suit, white t-shirt and a black tie matching in a way that...

He was the most attractive man who should exist on earth and he popped up in front of my eyes in this precise moment.

“Hey, now what happens to you?”

Mario touched my shoulder and I realiced I kept looking at that guy with no reason. I came back to reality and saw my parents going out from behind my temporary dreaming objective. “Mario, good bye” I told him without even looking at him and grabbed my bag.

I walked to my parents while I kept my eyes on the burnet man I almost had next to me and, left Mario dumped. My mother finally saw me and said hi with her hand. I couldn’t complain for my parents. They were caring, never raised their voices and discuss situations with me. They didn’t spend much time at home, they spend most of their time in the firm, at boring work parties and at court, but you wouldn’t imagine the amazing parties my friends and I prepared at home while my parents were working. In the last one, I remember I spent two hours lying on the floor, trying to handle half bottle of vodka we drank in a flush of Paula for missing five times straight playing pennies.

“Sweetheart!”

My mother moved her hand making gestures for me to approach to them, while my father kept talking with his suit partners from the firm.

Introduce him to me, introduce him to me, introduce him to me, introduce him to me, introduce...

“Sweetheart look, I’ll introduce you Jorge Alonso, the new lawyer we have at the law firm” and speaking to him: “Jorge, this is our daughter, Laura”.

Jorge turned his head when he heard my mother introducing him to someone and he stared at me with the largest and deepest green eyes I have never seen in my short life, with a shocking face. Shocked? Yes, I didn’t understand very well why, but he stood still at instant and lift an eyebrow, watching me like if I was a proof of a crime. He remained serious, not a little smile ran across his lips. And those lips...

I tried to clear my mind from those thoughts and I approached him to kiss hello. In that moment, Jorge extended to shake hands.

Shit.

“Pleasure to meet you, Laura” he said with a deep sexy voice.

I think the seasickness and suffocation feeling I had when I heard him pronounce the first two words he dedicated me in his life, were telling me this guy was going to give me a lot of troubles; headackes at least.

I showed my hand as well, and he shaked it strongly but slower as the milliseconds came by. Or at least that was what I thought. I have the gift to transform moments into movies scenes.

He looked at me few seconds until he got tired of the introduction I guess, and he stopped paying attention. He turned back and kept talking to his work partners just like that, leaving me out of place in the middle of the sidewalk.

I don’t remember anything of what came next. My memory only locked that piece of time and the rest of the conversation was dismissed for being vacuous. But I’m possitive that it was the exact moment I knew, he was the one. I had fallen in love. Yes, I was in love, how could I not be in love? Well, yes, I was seventeen and my parents kept repiting that at my age everything grew bigger; they say feelings change with the time and bla bla bla...I refuse to become an adult if I’ll be forced to say all those bullshit as well. Even more if I’ll also believe them. I don’t understand those couples who recognize they are not in love but they stay together because they care each other and, whose ensure that means to have a mature relationship. That is to conform to what you first see, that is not real love. And honestly, it’s not that I have much experience but I don’t agree that is good for any of both sides of the couple.

“Marta, girl, you are not going to believe what happened to me today!”

Everyday when I came home, I started calling locked at my room with the home phone, and today I had a greater reason. The first one I called was Marta, she was my best friend since I was six. When we just started at first year of primary school we became unbreakable. Even now. She has always been gorgeuos, and I don’t say it because she is my best friend: blonde, big green eyes, taller than me and an amazing body. She caught guy’s attention everytime we went out to party. Plus, she was responsible and a good student.

Paula and I were likely regular. We met Paula three years ago. She came from Burgos because her father was relocated at work. We liked each other since the beginning and, we started to hang out for party all of us together. She was burnet, had a black short hair, she was as high as I was and enjoyed more going to parties than studying. The rest of our friends were not relevant to me to be honest. They come and go every time, the only ones who were always there were Martha, Paula and me.

“Tell me, tell me! Gossip girl!” Martha loved gossip, she couldn’t help it, I felt her enthusiasted on the other side of the phone.

“Today, I was with Mario waiting for my parents to go out from work and suddenly, I saw them walking down with a twenty something super handsome guy in a suit... and he turns to be a new fellow worker from my parents. He has been introduced to me and we shaked hands... and I believe that’s him, he is the one!”

“What do you mean he is the one?” Martha laughed out loud “Lau, you already have a boyfriend besides, this guy is very older he doesn’t care about you at all”.

“Don’t be so negative, he is the one! I’m sure”.

“Of course and, what will we do with Mario”

“My goodness, Mario... Wait, I’ll text him and I’ll break up with him...” I said extending my arm to reach my new black Alcatel One Touch celphone. I was crazy with this little device.

“But how will you break up with him through a message! Besides, why!”

I wrote in the celphone a quick typical message: “I’m sorry, Mario, It doesn’t work, but I still want to be friends”

“So, who cares, he shall find another girl next week. We had just been dating for few months, Martis, don’t be so exquisite...” Marta was always the responsible one, the straight one, who wanted to take me through the good path, although most of time I was the one who got her twisted her path to the wrong side.

“Lau, really, look at you... poor Mario has done nothing to you...”

“Bah, who cares, he wasn’t the man of my life...But Jorge is! I’m possitive!”

I heard Marta sigh.

“There’s nothing to do with you...”

“I know, but you still love me...”

I managed to make Marta laugh and she stopped discussing with me. I didn’t know why everybody gave so much attention to all this couple’s thing, especially at our age. It was simple, at seventeen you just need to hang out and that’s it. If you get bored, had a bad time or don’t feel butterflies in your stomach, it means you have to end that and go to something else. As simple as that. Nothing happened! But people messed their heads with stupid problems, they suffered when they had to break up; then, they spent the entire season head down. When I break up, I party with muy friends and the next day I totally forgot about everything. They told me that I act that way because I am really cold or, because I am still inmature. But I knew exactly why it was.

I had not found Jorge yet.