I was forty-three. My daughter was already studying, several years passed after the divorce, and my friends stopped asking me if I would still try to find a husband. I had stopped believing it myself. After a certain age, women seem to become invisible, or at least that’s how I felt at times.
I flew to Turkey alone. All I wanted was sunshine, good food and a few days to myself.
At the hotel, I saw an advertisement for educational diving.
To be honest, I was afraid. I have never dived deeper than a bathtub in my life. But somehow I wrote it down.
That’s how I met Emir…
He was a diving instructor. Dark, sexy, calm, always smiling, polite. I think that only because of him I dared to dive and get to know the underwater world.
After the dive, he offered to have coffee. I agreed, although I know that it should be taboo for locals working in the service industry to have relationships with tourists.
— How old are you? he suddenly asked.
I laughed.
— A woman is not asked that.
“Okay, I’ll figure it out,” he smiled. “Thirty-five?”
I haven’t laughed so hard in years.
He didn’t blink when I told him the actual number.
“It’s beautiful,” he said so simply that I was even confused.
But when I found out how old he was, all laughter disappeared – twenty-eight.
Fifteen years difference.
I remember being angry with myself when I got back to my room that night. Seriously? What do you imagine here? Young man at the resort. Diving instructor. Probably flirting with half the women in the hotel. This leads nowhere.
I tried to avoid him.
I missed the diving lesson the next day.
Another one too.
But on the fourth morning, he himself stopped me at the pool. He apologized for doing something wrong.
I don’t know why, but that sentence disarmed me. We started talking. First about the little things. Why does he work here? How I live in Lithuania. what i like What do I miss?
Then about more serious things. About loneliness. About how strange it is to realize one day that you gave everything in your life to others, and left almost nothing for yourself.
One evening he took me to the beach away from the hotel grounds. We listened to the lapping waves, looked at the stars. He told about the world that lies under the water. And after that he kissed me… And I didn’t stop him. At that moment, there was only one thought in my head: after all, it’s just a vacation.
But I soon realized that I was lying to myself. I began to worry when I would see him again. I waited for his messages. He called me beautiful.
I was ashamed of my feelings for such a young man.
I kept thinking about what my relatives, friends, daughter would say?
The last evening we sat by the sea.
He was silent longer than usual.
“You could come back,” he finally said.
I laughed, even though my eyes were full of tears. We both understood that our relationship and feelings have no continuation. Resort stories rarely have it.
I didn’t tell anyone when I got home.
After that, we corresponded for a while, I planned to save up again and fly to him, but the correspondence became less frequent, until finally one day he stopped replying to my messages…
However, I really don’t want to end this story because of sadness. I did not bring a refrigerator magnet from Turkey. I took home a reminder that even an older woman can still feel wanted, alive and wanted. I brought back a memory that I have cherished for years and will cherish for the rest of my life.
This story is part of the essay contest “The Stars Determined Fate: The Incredible Story of How We Met.”
Until St. John’s Day, we will be waiting for your stories by e-mail at benuakime@lrytas.lt. We will award prizes to the authors of the three stories that have received the most attention from the readers – the book “Witch Freda” published by the publishing house “Alma littera”, whose author is Jurgita Noreikienė, editor of the portal Lrytas “Gyvenimo būdo”, has just been published.
