– I suppose you are Carmen, sorry if I have made you dizzy these days. I’m Miguel, we’ve spoken on the phone.
– Delighted, don’t worry, it wasn’t a bother.
At 27 years old, Carmen, executive of marketinghad returned to Madrid after two years working in Paris. Within a few weeks she was already employed in the sector, and she was in those days, September 2019, helping to organize a conference to which Miguel, 44, took a while to confirm his attendance. When they saw each other, that innocent dialogue occurred on the surface, but with a charge of depth that the two always remembered. “It was something we felt at the same time,” says Carmen sitting on a terrace in Madrid.
They spoke two or three more times. He invited her to dinner at his table with his colleagues on the last night of the conference. When it was over, they all went to a nightclub and there, Carmen decided to leave. “I’ll accompany you,” he told her. He dropped her off at her house by taxi. A kind and affectionate farewell, without fanfare. As she walked up the stairs of the building, she called out to him.
– Is something wrong, Carmen? He said worriedly.
– Yes, something happens: I like you.
They stayed talking on the phone until they had to go to work.
On the first date, he picked her up on a motorcycle and took her through the Sierra. When they returned to Madrid, they took a walk and ended up sitting on a bench in the Royal Palace. There they had their first kiss.
On the second date, he took her on a secret plan to Segovia, and there they rode in a hot air balloon for the first time.
Two weeks later, they went to Mallorca together. “We talked and talked, we traveled, it was all like a dream,” says Carmen. But upon returning from the island, he stopped dead. The age difference, the fact of belonging to the same sector: he was scared. And suddenly, the perfect relationship of the first days became a rare period of four years in which they never spent more than two weeks without seeing each other or speaking, but without the intensity of the beginning and, of course, without the project of a relationship.
“I gave a lot of importance to my career, the circumstance of our work environment and the age difference. He was 17 years older than me and told me to find someone in his thirties, that would give me fewer problems in the future,” says Carmen. But something happened, and there was no wear and tear, nor did the love or interest wane, and the anxiety to be together began to devour them.
In the same way, Carmen was looking for a way to rebuild her life and turn the page: she was falling in love with another. And Miguel lost his head, or gained it. In January 2023 he called Mónica, Carmen’s best friend, to tell her that Carmen was the woman of his life, that he couldn’t stand the vertigo of losing her, and he wanted to propose. Forever, without distance, without false relationships covered in friendship.
Days later, the two met at El Retiro, where Carmen saw Miguel cry for the first time while he took out of his pocket the note that she had included in the first gift she had given him four years before: “May you continue dreaming of moons and may you never be afraid.” the light is missing.” Because there were codes between them. One was the “dream about moons” that he had told her from the first night, and that led them to get a small moon tattooed: he on the wrist, she behind the ear.
He had always told her that he would ask for her hand in New York, which Carmen didn’t know. One day he gave him a guide vintage from the city with a note that said: “I hope one day we can go.” And on April 13, 2023, he picked her up at home on his motorcycle, and they took a ride along the same roads in the Sierra as the first time, four years before. When they arrived in Madrid, they got off the motorcycle and started walking. Carmen was overcome by a strange feeling of déjà vuas if that had already happened, as if what was going to happen was somehow installed in an interrupted past. Until they reached a bench in the Royal Palace, their bench. And there he said: “We will come here when we are bad to value what we have, to know what we can lose if we do not take care of it.” She took out a ring and asked him to marry her.
The next day, April 14, Miguel went on his annual biker trip that in 2022 took them to India and that year to Colombia. “It will be the last,” he said. “You better come back safe and sound,” she wrote to him on WhatsApp the day she left: “Enjoy and be very careful.” On April 18, Miguel stopped answering his cell phone. It was 10 hours. Carmen, after calling everyone, had a tragic premonition. She sent a message to Mónica, her friend: “If he contacts you, let him come back as soon as possible, you ask him,” she said desperately. Miguel connected hours later. There were storms in Colombia and connection problems, and also a colleague had gotten lost on the route and they had to go out to look for him. Carmen breathed calmly. On April 19, she met her friends to invite them to dinner and show them her engagement ring. When he left the house, his cell phone rang: it was Miguel’s sister.
– Are you alone? Call me when you’re with someone.
– No, no way, what’s going on?
– It’s Miguel. He had an accident, he died.
Carmen barely remembers what happened next. I was with Little girla water dog puppy that Miguel had given him. The animal fell from her arms and collapsed on the street until her friends came to pick her up. At the funeral, Miguel’s fellow bikers told him that his boyfriend was radiant and full of joy on the trip, and at night he made the wedding guest list.
“You have taught me a lot, you have loved me very much, you have pushed me to fight for my dreams and you believed in me from the first conversation. From now on I will see life differently: simpler, more ephemeral and also more wonderful. “I’m going to drink it like you taught me: until the last drop and always without fear,” she wrote on her social networks.
Four years before, on that first trip of hers to Mallorca, Carmen read normal people by Sally Rooney. Miguel’s friends returned the book to Carmen, among her personal effects. normal peoplewhich Carmen didn’t know he had bought and was reading. He had a large bookmark with the French cover of a famous Tintin: On a marché sur la Lune (We have gone to the moon).
Two months ago, a call startled Carmen. It was the priest of the parish where they were going to get married on July 13, 2024 to ask her how many guests were expected in the church.
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