Everything is illuminated

On Thursday Joe (see The ring) handed me a postcard with a beating heart on the front and the following text on the back:

A você que me deixa assim quando estamos juntos.
É sempre bom estar com você.
Beijos!!! Joe

I had done some thinking in the meantime. It was clear that he was very afraid that I'd run off with someone else. Me! He's such a great guy, and so very beautiful. Why would I ever cheat on him? I could delete my profiles and promise fidelity right now, and, in a few weeks, start wearing a commitment ring. It sounded as if I had a boyfriend. Although it was very quick to be using that word, I really didn't know what was missing in the equation.

So why not just use that word and make Joe very happy? I would never forgive myself if I lost this guy because I was afraid to follow my heart. I really wanted to put his heart at rest -- and my own too. And so, just before we went to bed after another very nice evening, I asked him to be my boyfriend. He said 'no'. I couldn't believe my ears.

He said I was moving too fast. Me! He was the one who had talked about fidelity and marriage and rings and trips, and now I was moving too fast? I confronted him and he answered, "Time will tell if we are going to be boyfriends." Okay, this sounded sensible standing alone, but certainly it wasn't in line with all the things he had said before.

On Friday, the next morning, I was still feeling a bit rejected and he noticed. "Don't be sad," he said, but I was. He gave me a lift to the train station on his moped, and it felt great moving through the city with my arms around him. When he dropped me off he said, "I'm not rejecting you, we need to talk about this next time we meet."

That evening we went out together and we talked a bit more about our situation. It turned out that due to an administrative error, he had suddenly been hit with a ten thousand euro bill which wasn't properly his obligation at all. His lawyer had assured him she could prove that an error had been made -- he had let me read some of the correspondence -- but he wasn't too sure about that.

He said that he wanted to have this resolved before exchanging commitments with me, because if he would have to pay the ten grand, he would go back to Brazil and never enter Europe again. He didn't want to leave a boyfriend behind then. I told him I didn't see any difference between that situation and the relationship we had at the moment, and he agreed.

"So," I asked, "when I meet my mom next Tuesday, can I show her your picture?" He nodded. "And can I tell her that the guy in the picture is my boyfriend?" I added. He laughed, put his arm firmly around me -- we were in a bar, otherwise he would have kissed me -- and he said, broadly smiling, "Yes, you can!"