Story about Love

Story about Love

The hourglass

Maria always liked hourglasses. So much so, that she had one tattooed on one shoulder, tiny, that she had done on her birthday, and another, real, on the bedside table, that she had bought on a trip she made to Spain with her older sister. To her they were the promise that the best of life was yet to come, that she simply had to be patient. Maria was not a patient woman.

That is why when she met Ezequiel, the two of them waiting for a train to take them to work, she could barely pay attention to him, engrossed as she was in the twenty minute delay of the transport. Not even when that nice boy asked the time (Who asks the time today?), Which was obviously an excuse to start the conversation. Maria smiled at him (a scant smile) and without saying a word she pointed to the digital clock on the wall.

"Are you running late?" Ezequiel, who was wearing a suit and tie, told him then. Maria thought that maybe she would work in a bank. She, on the other hand, was a designer, and she could dress however she wanted.

"Yes," she replied, "I'm always late, I don't know why."

"Well, it's better than always arriving early," Ezequiel laughed.

"Why?"

"Because you would have to wait."

"Oh, no. I'm lousy waiting ”, admitted María.

"You see". The two shared a smile (a sincere smile). And before they could add another word, the station's speaker announced the suspension of the service, and a wave of people swept the platform, and pushed them in opposite directions. Maria arrived very late to the office and did not think about that stranger again.

And so it would have been for the rest of her life, had they not met again, a few days later, at the leaving the office, under a foolish, insistent rain, which had surprised Maria without an umbrella. He had arranged to go out with her best friends, but first she had to stop by her house and, for a change, she was late. So she stepped onto the street and raised her hand to call a taxi, but half an hour passed and neither stopped. Finally, she spotted one at the end of the street and ran toward it, only to meet a man in a suit who was holding, seconds before, the same door handle.

María was already about to fight for the right to the taxi, when she recognized Ezequiel, who was looking at her amused by her side.

"Are you late again?" Was his greeting.

This time she Maria received him enthusiastically, as if they were old friends, and she suggested that they share the taxi. He accepted. They were going to different places, but not very far away. That's how they met: sharing the backseat of a taxi that smelled of mothballs. They got out of the taxi in the same place, a cafeteria intermediate between their destinations, and they talked during long enough to understand that they not only liked each other, but were perfect for him. other. Where Maria was visceral and aggressive, Ezequiel was patient and delicate. Where she was passionate, he was curious. A newly discovered magnetism was pulling them toward each other.

There was only one "little" problem: Ezekiel was engaged. Her marriage would take place in a few months, with a girl from a good family who worked in the same company accountant than him. And although he was fiercely attracted to Maria, he was not going to throw away a planned, slow life like the one he led. Maria had simply been late in her life.

That afternoon they said goodbye and promised to remain as friends, although neither was excited by the idea of ​​remembering the impossible all the time. But they did not dare to say goodbye either. They kept talking, texting or e-mailing, but even then things always tended to get out of hand. The line that separates friendship and love was getting thinner with each exchange.

Then came the day of Ezequiel's marriage and their subsequent honeymoon in Acapulco. There was no need to agree on the distance. They just stopped writing. What could not be was not. Maria was sad for a few weeks, in which she drank and danced with her friends every day, and in which she played at falling in love with various people she met along the way. Deep down, she wanted to be alone. She wanted to wait. She didn't know why, but she wanted to wait. But Maria was not a patient woman.

It was thus that a few months later she met Martín. A fiery guy, like her, full of tattoos, with whom she could dance until dawn and who always seemed up for something new. It was like finding herself, but in a male body. And they were attracted to each other like two cars in a traffic accident.

Trapped in each other, they began an intense relationship, which over time fulfilled Maria's expectations more and more: she became deeply, free, starkly sincere. And charged with a love very different from the one she had felt for Ezequiel: this was an impatient, daring love, like her, like Martín. A year after meeting at a disco, and contrary to what all of her friends had anticipated, María and Martín planned their lives together. Ezequiel's name became one more in Maria's phone book.

Until one day, the least suspected, Maria received a message from her former lover. She missed her, she wanted to know how she was. And so they met again, in the same cafeteria where they had met, almost two years ago. Ezequiel wore a suit and tie, almost identical to the ones he was wearing that day they had met for the first time. He looked sad, sorry. Their marriage had deflated, turned gray in no time, and they had decided to separate.

Maria, on the other hand, looked full, radiant, like a fire at her peak. And although she felt an unexpected nostalgia for Ezequiel, she could not remember what it was that had attracted her to him. Her equanimity had turned to passivity, his gentleness to dejection. Something had gone out inside him, and he seemed to need Maria's fire to relight it. Only this time it was Maria who did not dare to take the risk. Her relationship with Martín was a valuable, unexpected finding. And although she felt for Ezekiel a deep compassion (after all, she had been in her place), she did not really know how to help him. Now it was her turn to wait.

That afternoon, Maria told him about the things she did during her absence and tried to encourage her. She told him not to regret it, not to live life thinking about past choices, and Ezequiel for her part cried, although she did not say exactly why she was crying. Shortly before separating from her, she Maria gave him something that she had brought him: the hourglass that she had had for years on her nightstand. She gave it to him as a memory, as a message and an instruction for life.

"Aren't you going to need it?" Ezequiel asked him, somehow looking a bit more comforted.

"No," she replied, pointing to her tattoo on her shoulder, "I have another one that works much better."

References:

• "Story" in Wikipedia.

What is a story?

A story or narration is a set of real or fictional events organized and expressed through language, that is, a story, a chronicle, a novel, etc. Stories are an important part of culture, and telling and / or listening to them (or, once invented the writing, reading them) constitutes an ancestral activity, considered among the first and most essential of the civilization.

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