They’d been best friends for eleven years before anything romantic happened, a fact that still occasionally made people laugh in disbelief when they heard it.
“Eleven years,” people would say. “How did neither of you notice?”
The truth, Joaquín had come to understand, was more complicated than not noticing. He’d noticed plenty, for years, and decided deliberately not to act on it — not out of cowardice, but because he’d genuinely valued the friendship too much to risk it on a feeling that might have been temporary.
It hadn’t been temporary. It had simply waited, patiently, for over a decade, until a single ordinary evening — nothing dramatic, just the two of them on her porch after a long day, the conversation lapsing into a silence that suddenly felt different than all the silences before it.
“I think I’ve been in love with you for years,” he’d said, finally, at thirty-four, after eleven years of friendship had built a foundation neither of them had fully recognized as one.
Yejin hadn’t been surprised, exactly. She’d later admit she’d wondered, occasionally, over the years, and dismissed it each time as something she was imagining.
“Why now?” she’d asked.
“Because I finally believed I’d rather risk the friendship than keep wondering.”
Three years married now, they still occasionally marveled at the strangeness of it — that they’d built eleven years of foundation before either of them admitted what they were building it for. Most people fell in love first and learned each other after. They’d done it backwards, learning every flaw and strength and habit first, before ever risking the vulnerability of wanting more.
“Best decision I ever delayed,” Joaquín said now, watching her across the kitchen.
“Eleven years is a long delay.”
“Worth every year of the wait.”
✦ Today’s Reflection
Has there ever been a relationship in your life that needed time to become what it was always meant to be? What did the waiting teach you?
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Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 
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