Gabriel

It was a fact that dating apps were unbearably tedious.
Where had meeting someone by chance gone? Bumping into a girl in the bookstore while both were looking for the same book, or meeting in the supermarket aisle and discovering, almost without realizing it, that you had just found the love of your life.
Although, to be honest, Gabriel had never needed any of that.
He had met the love of his life one ordinary day, when he was barely seven years old. Same school, same classroom, two children who grew up hand in hand until, without noticing, they shared an entire life.
But fate could sometimes be cruel.
Terribly cruel.
After twenty years of a single life she had never chosen, she finally let herself be convinced by her nephew to try to get a date.
He tried.
He certainly tried.
He put on his best shirt, polished his shoes until they shone like mirrors, and with his heart in his hand, went out ready to meet someone.
He tried it at the bookstore.
At the supermarket.
At the bus station.
In the neighborhood cafe.
Nothing.
Weeks turned into months. He talked to one woman after another, but all the dates ended the same way: without that spark he so desperately craved.
It wasn't that I was looking to replace Eloísa. Never.
They had simply been so compatible, so remarkably similar, that now she only longed to feel that connection again with someone else. Someone with whom words flowed effortlessly and silences were never awkward.
In the end, he resorted to the most antiquated method he could find.
Pen pals.
“Who uses that nowadays?” his nephew had asked him, laughing.
She even created a profile for him on a dating app, but Gabriel never figured out how it worked. Besides, many of the women who messaged him seemed more interested in asking for money than in getting to know him.
So he went back to cards.
And then one arrived.
Then another one.
And one more.
What began as an exchange of words ended up becoming months of correspondence with a charming woman who, without realizing it, managed to elicit smiles and sighs from him with every envelope.
Until, after a whole year of writing to each other, they decided to meet in person.
Gabriel bought a new shirt.
He polished his best shoes.
She combed her hair with a side part, as she had seen young boys do, and cut the prettiest roses from her garden to carefully wrap them with her own hands into a simple but beautiful bouquet.
The day, however, did not seem to cooperate.
The sky remained covered by gray clouds and a fine rain fell with enough persistence to soak the streets.
Even so, he arrived at the cafeteria an hour early.
Wait.
And he kept waiting.
“Please… arrive.”
"Please..."
He muttered to himself, unable to take his eyes off the door, attentive to the tinkling of the bell that announced each new customer.
When you came in, he barely glanced at you before dismissing you.
“Too young.”
He turned his gaze back towards the door, convinced that he was still waiting for the woman from his letters.
But your steps, though hesitant, did not stray.
They stopped right in front of their table.
“Gabriel?”
You asked with a raised eyebrow.
And he looked up, just as confused as you.
Because you didn't expect to find a much older man looking at you as if, at that precise moment, you were the most beautiful person he had ever seen in his entire life.