It all started in Sacramento, California.
A friend (who was rather keen on me) was having a birthday party at a local restaurant. He asked if I could co-host. Sensing my hesitation, he mentioned that one of the guests was from Spain, knowing that I had spent more than a decade there and was feeling terribly homesick after recently moving to California. The idea of chatting with someone who might understand my longing for bocadillos de jamón, la noche Madrileña, and cobblestone streets piqued my interest, so I agreed.
I remember standing by the door, dutifully greeting guests as they arrived. But I don’t remember much after the tallest, most gorgeous man sauntered in, hands casually in his pockets like that iPhone emoji. He mumbled something I’ll never recall about being from Spain and knowing the host, but I wasn’t really listening — instead, I literally grabbed him by the hand, whisked him over to a table, and tucked him into a corner.
That’s where we stayed, lost in conversation and oblivious to everyone around us, including the people he came with and, well, my co-hosting duties. I left the party early and mentioned in passing that I had to be up early for tennis practice the next morning. He offered to come by. Not only did he show up bright and early, he brought his racket and jumped into a doubles match! We spent every single day together after that. But you didn’t think that’s where the story ends, did you? It was only just beginning!
As we talked more and more, we realized how eerily parallel our lives had been up until that point. Missing each other by mere moments, at every turn, just like in that one movie.
In Madrid, where we both lived at the same time, we had lived on opposite sides of the same street. We probably crossed paths countless times — shopped at the same stores and rode the same subway trains. We even worked next to each other. I was a bartender at a club near Atocha, right next to a McDonald’s — and guess who worked at that McDonald’s? That’s right, my person! Apparently, after his work shifts, he would come sit at the very bar where I worked. Maybe I even handed him a drink or said hello? We will never know.
How we never actually met during those years remains a mystery. Or maybe we did, and the universe was just waiting for the right moment.
He eventually finished university, met an American girl, got married, and moved to Modesto, California. Meanwhile, I met an American man, followed him to North Carolina, and got married myself. Life went on… until it didn’t. That marriage ended within two years. I craved a fresh start and also needed distance, so I packed my things and moved to San Francisco, wide-eyed and innocent, completely unprepared for the sky-high rent. San Francisco quickly became Sacramento.
Meanwhile — let’s call him “Mr. Tall” since he was not yet my person officially — also got divorced and also moved to Sacramento, into a neighborhood called Citrus Heights, just a boulevard away from where I lived in Fair Oaks. We were orbiting each other once again, and it was only a matter of time.
As fate would have it, he had to work on his birthday, and his coworkers decided to take him out afterward. One of them had a friend hosting a big birthday party — you guessed it, *the* birthday party I was co-hosting. The moment he walked through that door, everything fell into place.
After that impromptu tennis match the next morning, we were inseparable. Within a week, we moved in together. Within the second week, we eloped to Connecticut — well, actually, he had recently won an Emmy Award, which came with accolades and job offers galore. He immediately got a job offer from ESPN, and at that time, it was a no-brainer that we needed to run, not walk, to Connecticut. We got there and secretly got married at a courthouse with a clerk as our witness, and I also got pregnant — all within a whirlwind month.
When you’ve spent a lifetime crossing paths, sometimes everything just clicks into place — a.k.a. IYKYK.
The big family reveal you ask? We waited until our child’s baptism to tell our parents that we had gotten married. They were a healthy mix of happy, confused, a little hurt at being left out, and then happy again.
My person and I recently celebrated 15 years.
