It is a cold cafeteria with gray walls and floors. Round and high metal tables. Servers in white clothes. The building is made of marble and transparent glass, stuck between a residential street and the highway. It is the only meeting place for these offices of the European Commission. I live alone in Brussels with my two children. After my divorce from their father, I really want to meet someone, but it is complicated between my job and my children to manage.
I see her at the cafeteria, having breakfast with her colleagues. To the one who accompanies me, I say that this big boy with dark blue eyes pleases me. He answers me “Bof”. I find it sweet and romantic. The next week, he is seated alone. I see it and I don’t think much. As we jump into cold water or parachute, I start. I approach it. “May I?” He lets me sit down, does not seem so surprised as that by my audacity. We then exchange banalities, the general management in which we work, him economic policies, me the protection of the environment, our nationalities, since when we work there.
“Are you married?” I said, seeing his alliance shine on his finger. Yes, he has two children, like me. We leave without exchanging our numbers, I only showed him where I was working. Afterwards, we come across several times by chance in the streets of the Belgian capital. But still nothing. I am feverish, I often think of him, I like it a lot.
One day, he landed in my office to offer me a coffee while my nephews came to see me in Brussels. I answer him that I can’t, he leaves the room. My 14 year old nephew turns to me: “He’s crazy about you, this boy, it shows”. We continue the ballet of the cafeteria, the freeze -dried cafes on the aluminum tables. “You are my best friend,” he announced to me in front of the distributor another day. His naivety leaves me perplexed.
I can’t take it anymore, my falsely spontaneous passages in front of the door of his office. Finally a lunch. This time, we go to the museum of Tervuren to see the African masks. We kiss. It is annoying because he is Irish, of a very Catholic family, married for ten years with the first woman he met outside of his family. But I’m in love with him, so I take the risk.
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