This is not the story about a princess who lived in a castle until, one day, she found prince charming, fell in love with him, and both lived happily ever, walking towards the sunset in a white horse. I’m not a princess, never was. That doesn’t mean that life hasn’t provided me with opportunities to be a little princess, on the contrary. I was born in a ‘conventional family’, so to speak. Conservative parents, traditional school. But I’ve always been the black sheep in this family, the one with colored hair and a shocking attitude. The one who smokes, drinks, swears and enjoys a bohemian life. The right kind of wrong girl. That girl mothers would never want as a daughter-in-law and boys don’t usually take home to introduce to their parents. That fun girl in the gang who is always ready for the next adventure.
Until that day when life knocked me down and made me realize that everything can change in a heartbeat.
It’s four o’clock on a Friday morning and I’m here, lying on this hospital bed. I look around and there’s Rafa, sitting on a chair right beside my bed, his eyes closed, immersed in a restless sleep. I can see his eyes surrounded by small dark circles, his unshaved hint of beard starting to show, his coat on the armrest. I watch him carefully: his brown hair, messed by fingers running through so many times; those expression lines on his eyes, which cause his eyes and lips to smile together, and on his cheeks, marking irresistible dimples. While I look at him, I realize how much his presence is important in my life and the only reason that I’m here, on this hospital bed, with all these things attached to me, is because of him.
Everything I wanted was taking that trip, at peace with whatever life prepared for me, but Rafa wouldn’t allow it. The only thing I needed to reconsider this decision was a shred of hope and that was exactly what I received.
To help you understand how things came to this point, we must go back about eight years in the past. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the first time I stepped into my college building. It was an extremely hot summer day, and the sun was burning. My neighbor and beer buddy Beto gave me a ride. Yes, I was only seventeen but already very fond of a night out. My friends used to say that I had an old, wise, and bohemian soul. I was in town for a bit more three months to study, guess what, Law. That was my last attempt to please my parents, who wouldn’t even consider the possibility of me not following the family career, since my father, uncles and grandparents worked in different Law fields.
Beto was a Social Communication student, a couple of semesters ahead of me, who lived in the apartment downstairs. He was the personification of every woman’s surfer boy dream, almost a walking cliché: sun-kissed and almost always messy blond hair; tanned skin; a dragon tattoo on his arm; an honest smile, and flip-flops on his feet. No matter where we went, he never wore shoes or sneakers: he used to say they hurt his feet. And, honestly, it was all part of his natural charm.