Page 41 of Love Harder

He still checks in with my socials. As I do with his.

There really isn’t much we can do as we both agreed that long distances don’t usually work.

So it feels as though we’re both a ghost in one another’s life, watching from afar but never getting too close.

I don’t know what the future holds for us, but I do hope we will see one another again. I don’t think it will be the same as those simpler times in what feels like a lifetime ago, but I do know that I will never regret meeting him.

He is doing so well in his new life, and that’s all I ever wanted for him.

So the question is, will Switzerland and I see one another again?

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

Ishould have learned my lesson.

You’ve read my tragic love affair with love. I should have just accepted that love and I were destined to speak different languages without Google Translate on hand.

I realized early on that I was okay with sitting by myself in a restaurant or a cinema; I didn’t need someone to complete me because I was content on my own.

My divorce forced me to relearn how to be human again in a sense. When you’ve spent over a decade with someone, you lose a sense of who you are. Well, that’s how I felt anyway. But I didn’t mind. I did this because of…love.

That asshole.

So newly single, the world was my oyster and blah blah…but half the time, I felt as though I was thrown into the deep end and expected to know how to swim. I can’t, by the way. But as we know, love doesn’t care what we can or can’t do.

I tried my best and made a lot of mistakes. But I’m at the age where I like to see my mistakes as lessons learned, so when I met a younger man, I should have guessed he was a lesson that was about to grip me by the throat and choke the good sense right out of me.

We all know where this is going…

Dimples was a lot younger than me. Like a lot. I know they say age is only a number, but from the get-go, I knew I couldn’t keep him. And more importantly, he wouldn’t want to be kept.

He had that something, something that I go goo goo gaga over. I don’t know what it is. I get asked often how do I know.

I just do.

It was the same with the other men you’ve read about.

You just know.

And I knew with Dimples that he was going to break me, and I was going to fucking relish every second of it because I’m clearly a masochist.

I wasn’t looking for anything, not after Switzerland.

But I wasn’t looking for him either when I met him. And sometimes, that’s when the best stories unfold.

He was the one who saw me first, but the moment I took note of that twisted smirk and those incredible colored eyes, I couldn’t look away. He was confident and made the first move. I liked what he was throwing down.

He was witty and polite, but always, in the background, there were cheerleaders, waving their pom-poms, chanting…roses are red, violets are blue, if I had a brick, I’d throw it at you.

He knew I was older. He told me he liked older women. He told me I was so attractive to him. He asked questions and seemed genuinely interested.

So what’s the issue here?

Roses are red, violets are blue, if I had a brick, I’d throw it at you.

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