July 2024
The moment I fell in love with Isa wasn’t the day I actually told her, even though that was the day I was tired of holding it back. I already knew by then. The moment I fell in love with her was the day I asked her to be my girlfriend, the 9th of July of 2024. I picked her up and we headed to Roma Norte. Argentina was playing in la Copa América and I really wanted to watch the game with her (they played against Canada; and it’s the only match I remember because I saw it with her). I even brought an extra Argentina shirt with me, and without hesitation, she slipped it on. She doesn’t even like football, but that didn’t matter. She knew it was important to me and that was enough for her. Besides, she'll never pass up the opportunity to dress up.
Traffic and my poor time management made us late, and by the time we arrived at Café Fútbol y Cámaras, it was packed. There were no seats left, so we sat on the floor, squeezed between strangers, watching the game. But she never complained and never acted bored. Instead, she was just happy, laughing, leaning into me, fully present in a moment she had no reason to care about, except for the fact that I did. She’ll never know how much that meant to me. After the match, we drove to Arcos for dinner. We had been together all day and it still didn’t feel like enough.
After dinner I drove her home, we sat in the car as we always did, stretching the night just a little longer. At 12:10 AM, she turned to me, scrolling through my phone, because as always, she was in charge of curating the perfect vibe. “Listen to this,” she said, pressing play. Pride by Kendrick Lamar. Me dijo que escucha bien because the song was going to change my life (it really did). So I listened closely for the first 3 and a half seconds until I realized I wanted this girl to be my girlfriend. I realized I didn’t want to imagine a version of my life that didn’t have her in it. So for the duration of the entire song (4 minutes and 35 seconds I will truly never forget how long I waited), I started sweating and my heart was racing like never before. When the song ended, I did it. Not in the best way, and definitely not at the best time. But I asked her if I could be her boyfriend. Those 4 minutes and 35 seconds was the moment I fell in love with her.
It wasn’t Pride by Kendrick Lamar that made me love this girl, it was the accumulation of millions of things like putting up with me all day long, watching 2 hours of something uninteresting to her, her excitement when she played songs I had never heard before in hope for them to make me feel like they made her feel when she heard them for the first time, the way she made each day exciting and made me happy by just being in her presence. This girl was and still is perfect in every way. This was the day she made me realize that I wanted for her to be in my life forever.
We kept going on dates throughout July. On the 21st of July, she met my siblings for the first time. We went to my sister Jose’s boyfriend’s ranch and had un asado. She met all three of my sisters and my brother. On the 24th, we had a more chill kind of date, we went to the Cheesecake Factory and played Uno. Just the two of us having fun and being competitive over cards. To end the month we tried to have a romantic museum day… but the universe had other plans. It started pouring out of nowhere and we got absolutely soaked. The rain wasn’t as romantic as it looked in the movies, but we still laughed through it all.
