He was fond of movies, movies of Latin America and disillusioned liberals, old-fashioned heroes and not-so-ordinary couples in love. He was fond of making them too, fitting scripts into cafes and plots into narrow alleyways. They met alone at a coffee shop, and in a matter of moments, they were convinced of each other's stories, and of that age-old idea that "there is something out there that is bigger than the both of us and we have to find it, you and I, we'll find it."

She sent him miradas in Catorce, he remained unsettled through December, and just as suddenly the stories ended. And that “something out there” remained out there and bigger than the both of them. In a fit of sadness, he dove back into self-imposed solitary confinement and the Moonlight sonata, and his individual dreams suddenly seemed like performances lost in their own expired cinema. But stories remain, whether of winged goddesses or Garcia Marquez's fortune tellers, and those shared between a boy and a girl remain more tangled than most.

"Aching is happiness," he read somewhere, and he realized that it would outlive his soft, melting heart and this lack of defense was perhaps the best defense to its presence. And as the months passed by, he began to smile with ease at the melodies of the Spring mornings that begin too early, stretching, to seemingly never end.

On a southern Wednesday night, he remembered her as he passed by the choreographed escalators, her with her funny-shaped nose and curious brown eyes. And on one, mythic, fabled night, he looked at her, those soft cheeks, and whispered to her rosy lips, "Sweet girl, tell me those stories again."

With a mischievous look on her face, as if she had known all along, she began, "There is something out there..."


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i was really in love with him.