Walking home after meeting Carmen, I felt… I don’t know. Lighter? Different? Something had shifted. Not in a big, dramatic way. Just… there. Sitting in the back of my mind.
I wasn’t looking for it.
I’d been caught up in getting things done—fixing the house, learning how to cook, hiking every damn trail in the mountains. Keeping busy. Not thinking too much beyond that.
And then, tonight.
I wasn’t even keen on the idea of going. Blind dates? Not my thing. But Rosa wasn’t having any of that.
“Robert, you spend too much time in your own head. Go. Have a drink. Talk to someone.”
So, I did.
And then Carmen walked in.
Dark hair, eyes that didn’t miss much, and that way some people have of owning a room without even trying. She looked around, spotted me, smiled—not polite, not awkward, just genuine.
“Robert?”
“That’s me. You must be Carmen.”
And from there, it was just… easy.
No weird silences, no forcing conversation. Just two people, talking, laughing, drinking wine, sharing a night.
She got it. The reason I ended up here. How I needed to step away from the noise, from the expectations, from the feeling that life was just… happening to me.
She’d done the same. Walked away from the city, found her own rhythm. She knew what it was like to wonder if you’d made the right choice, only to realise you could never go back.
We talked about village life—the way everyone knows your business before you do, how the shopkeeper notices if you don’t buy bread one morning, how everything moves slow until a festival comes around and suddenly it’s chaos.
She was funny. And sharp. And didn’t take herself too seriously.
And I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed that.
Not dating. Just connection.
I’d built this life here—this quiet, steady life—but maybe I’d also walled myself off too much.
As I walked home, the village quiet except for the sound of my own footsteps, I thought about that.
Maybe Rosa was right.
Maybe I needed to open up again.
I don’t know if I’ll see Carmen again. (I hope I do.) But tonight, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time.
And that?
That matters.
When I got to my house, I looked up. The stars were out, clear and sharp against the dark sky. And for the first time in years,
I felt like something was beginning.