“I had just turned eighteen when we met. He was in his...

“I had just turned eighteen when we met.  He was in his thirties.  I’d
wanted to go to the beach that day, but my mother made me go to a
restaurant with her friends.   While we were eating, this gringo came
over and started talking to us.  He didn’t speak a word of Portuguese,
and I didn’t speak a word of English.  My mother’s friends were
encouraging him to talk to me.  One of them gave him my number,
and the next day he started texting me these simple Spanish phrases.  
He’d write things like: ‘Vamos a la playa,’ which was funny, because I
spoke Portuguese.  Eventually he asked to take my mother and I out to
dinner.  He kept a dictionary in his hand the entire time we were
eating, and he spoke in very short phrases.  I asked him what he did,
and he accidentally said ‘diving.’  So for a long time, I thought I was
dating a diver.  When he went back to America, he started sending me
cards.  Then he began to visit on the weekends.  It was all very
exciting for me.  I fell in love with him.  But I didn’t really know
him.  Whenever we were together, he was away from the worries of his
life.  I fell in love with someone who was on vacation.”