Right after hitting send, I am back on my bike. Pumping it up a steep hill. Feeling on cloud nine. And scared as hell. I don’t check my email for hours, scared of seeing an empty inbox. Finally, hours later, I brave it.

He’s replied.

I’m right back on cloud nine. Ok. I put it out there. Now I will have my answer. I’m untraining years of hiding from action. No matter what the email says, this is a huge success. Let’s read the first line…

“Dear Valentina, So good to hear from you!” That is so positive. Wow. Ok! I continue reading… “I’m so glad you wrote this, thank you for sending it!! :)” A smiley face — this is even promising! Good good good. What next…. “I’m way too old for you, but what a cool compliment.”

Way too old. Huh. I sit on those words for awhile.

I mean, yes, it is the obvious point. Of course I’ve thought about the age difference. And I had finally decided it doesn’t matter to me. But. Wait. Is this a hard no? Or am I just touching on a vulnerability, and I should show him support?

I show the email to a Colombian friend, and she agrees it is ambiguous. She says go for it — it could honestly be a yes, and I need to know. I should disambiguate. I agree.

I craft a reply. A few of them. I eventually send one. He doesn’t write back, not for hours. Then days. Back to his usual 50% email response rate. I imagine it’s his way of saying, let’s pretend you didn’t just write that. Ugh. I let it sit. But, I think he disambiguated…

Months pass. Ever since March 2020, my feeling had been that if we just spent a few hours together, outside an office setting, we would know. All I wanted was an in-person try, to see if this could lead somewhere. His ‘No’ was a statement of current preference. We all know that in-person yields better results. There are so many reasons connection and communication are better that way. And anyway, he always sucked at email 😉

So even though I’ve tried and been implicitly rejected, I decide I’ll keep things open & play by ear our next meeting. In November 2021, I’m passing through the US for Thanksgiving. I email a slew of folks, almost don’t include him, but I figure why not, let’s just see. He replies enthusiastically that he’s in Argentina but we should do it next time. In Feb 2022 as I’m passing through again, I invite him and he accepts.

Right from the start, I realize I am on edge. (Even more than normal when seeing him.) This is the first time I’ve seen him since Covid, a meeting I’ve looked forward to for 2 years. But in the interim, we’ve had some weird email interactions. I feel somehow outside my skin. In my mind, there is a lot unsaid and unresolved. He brings none of it up. Nor do I. We proceed with niceties. Perhaps he feels this is a normal coffee chat. He doesn’t read my terror. In my mind, it is an hour of pure heightened anxiety, secrecy, discomfort.

In parallel, it is still fixed in my brain there’s a chance with him. That is, until he starts using words like “we” when referring to moving around and raising kids. Ah. Shit. He is not divorced! It was a false pretext all this time. I now believe his ‘kind’ rejection of me reflected that he may have been simply flattered — an ‘old’, respectful, married family man. I am half deflated, half relieved at the clarity.

Objectively speaking, my anxiety aside, it is a fine discussion. He is as charming and engaging as ever. I am visibly relaxed, slouched at the far end of the same couch inside the lovely wood-paneled faculty lounge. He is super curious to hear all of my Covid play by plays, I imagine half amused, half inspired. He relates to my sense of wanting to keep adventurous doors open, to always feeling a bit displaced. He recalls his Eastern European travels as a young athlete, and feels Berlin is a ‘romantic’ city. He is beyond bemused that I had a coffee in Lausanne with one of his undergraduate classmates.

He pushes me on why I love Argentina so much. I shrug. My last visit was 4 years ago, so I hardly know anymore. This plants a seed for me to figure out why… and I will end up moving to Buenos Aires 4 days later to find out. (The answer: the energy of the people, the priority on relationships and social time together, the beautiful architecture, the innovative people, and of course the great steak and wine. I will spend an amazing 2 months there and make new lifelong friends. I will recreate a vibrant social environment I love, for the first time since Covid truly feeling at peace and in tune with myself.) We together bemuse the stark difference between work styles in America and the rest of the world — a difference he, having grown up in a country that lacked a great work ethic, prefers. I tease him when I find out that he never, ever, ever takes the subway.

As we part, he takes a quick call from his coauthor. When he hangs up, I remark to him (in Spanish) that I had hoped to have some of our conversation in Spanish, but I forgot! For reasons unbeknownst to me, my comment leaves him speechless and seemingly a little shocked. (Perhaps he hadn’t realized I could understand his phone calls?)

We fist-bump goodbye the Covid-times Argentinian way. I head to the campus chapel and blow off some steam on the Steinway, my happy place :).

Denouement: My emotional journey with Henry may have transformed the way I approach love. As hard as it was to take a step forward with him, with all the uncertainty plus the unevenness in our power statures, the sheer amount of growth I experienced made it well worth it. I’m no longer afraid if I feel someone is “out of my league.” I’m no longer ashamed to share my feelings with someone; life is all about sharing love, and there is absolutely zero shame to attach to that. Every time I’ve taken the risk to share what I felt, my fear has been wholly unfounded. Instead, the news is gratefully and gently received. What a funny thing, to let a fear drive your decisions, when there is zero evidence of the things you’re afraid of! (A lesson I keep re-learning in my life.)

Fun fact: A few weeks into that Feb 2022 Argentina trip, I attended an alumni event where I befriended a sweet Argentinian lady working at an NGO. We hit it off, and we started discussing people we knew in common. It soon became clear that she works for Henry’s wife. I could not help but laugh. Nor could I not hold back the truth from her, that “I may have asked out Henry once, mistakenly thinking he was divorced! Please don’t tell her, I don’t think she knows!” She smiled, laughed it off, and exclaimed what amazing and caring people Henry and his wife are. Indeed, I agreed.