Love is patient, love is kind.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres. Love never ends.
(I Corinthians 13 4-7)

Our love story dates back many years ago, when we were still in our early teens. I was born on the paradise island of Roatan, but I grew up in La Ceiba where, as faith would have it, our love began to blossom. La Ceiba is a quant little city nestled along the coastline of Honduras; it is also the city where our lives became interwoven.
Henry, always adventurous, would ride his bicycle to his friends' Roberto and Luis Enrique' neighborhood to meet and hang out with them; Luis Enrique just so happened to be my neighbor. From the moment our eyes locked, it was an instant flechazo. He pursued, I played hard to get; it was a game of cat and mouse and yet, his passion never wavered.
We would meet together around the neighborhood, and it was on one of these days that I was dared into playing “ spin the bottle-yeah it was the late 80’s; no electronics or social media, thank God! We ran around playing libre, riding bicycles, shooting marbles, and of course, spinning the bottle in the hopes of sneaking a small peck on the lips from a schoolboy crush.
Because we attended different schools, we only saw each other on the weekends, or sometimes after school; this went on for a little while. However, as we matured, we both realized our connection was not simply puppy love; we were madly in love with one another. We spent every moment we could together, discussing our future together as husband and wife, musing where the twists and turns of life would take us, together.
Our teenage love, however, was disrupted prematurely by disapproving outside forces; for those of you that grew up watching Telenovelas, you know there is always someone, or a number of “ someone’s, trying to separate a Maria Jose and Juan Felipe. Thus, there was indeed a separation. We both went on living our lives separated from the other half. After what seemed like a lifetime without each other, some twenty-seven years or so, unbeknownst to me, Henry continued his pursuit of me by frequently conferring with anyone who had up-to-date knowledge of my whereabouts, checking up on me throughout the years with determined optimism that we would once more be reunited in our love.
His efforts were not in vain; I received a call one fateful evening and I could hardly believe my ears; it was Henry, my Henry! It was as if time's arrow had never elapsed. We said our hello's and chatted together, catching one another up on where these last couple centuries had landed us. Recalling this moment, Henry would compare this conversation to our teenage talks, the ones on the phone where his mother would ground him for the outrageous phone bills, as we would speak for hours discussing everything and nothing- which we still do.
In a matter of mere months, our whirlwind of a romance born anew reached a crescendo when Henry proposed over a lovely dinner; of course, I accepted. Two star-crossed lovers reunited at last, as husband and wife.

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