In 2021, I met a handsome Frenchman in the lobby of a Lisbon hostel. At the time, I was 25, and he was 22. We had dinner together, and after a few weeks of flirting over WhatsApp, we agreed to meet again in Paris.
Maxime took me to dinner in Montmartre and showed me the suburb where he grew up. He was kind, smart, and funny, but I expected to never see him again. I was heading home to Texas, and he was starting his career in Europe.
But we couldn’t stop talking, and after months of FaceTime calls, I went back to France. We went skiing, and Maxime introduced me to his friends and family. On the plane home, I realized I had fallen in love with…
