My story with Erik (1)

My name is Pol. I am forty-five years old, I am 1.76 m tall and weigh about sixty-five kilos. I have always taken good care of myself. I go to the gym two or three times a week and I think that, for my age, I keep myself pretty well.

I have been divorced for five years. The first three years after the divorce I had no relationship, neither sentimental nor sexual. I wasn't looking for anyone and, honestly, I didn't miss having someone by my side either. I got used to being alone and came to feel comfortable with it.

It was during my fourth year of divorce that I met Erik.

Now, as I remember all that, two years have already passed since that first meeting. Two years that changed many things in my life and that, if someone had told me then how they would happen, I probably wouldn't have believed it.

Sexually, I had always defined myself as hetero-flexible or, perhaps, bisexual. I never worried too much about labeling my desires. For me it was simple: I was attracted to a person, regardless of whether they were a man or a woman, when they managed to awaken something in me.

But until then I had never felt that a man could really alter my way of seeing things.

Until Erik appeared.

I met him on a Friday, during a company lunch organized to introduce the new executive who would take on the position of director of the Catalonia area. It was one of those lunches with senior executives and some area delegates. I was one of them.

And that Friday, without knowing it, I was about to begin a story that even today, two years later, I am still trying to understand.

Erik was sixty years old and German. Tall, very tall—he was close to one ninety—with a lean, toned body and a presence that commanded attention from the first moment. He had brown skin, as if the sun were a regular part of his life, brown eyes, and gray hair, especially at the temples and sideburns, which he kept shaved very short. A completely white mustache finished giving him a resounding, masculine, almost intimidating appearance.

He was not simply an attractive man. There was something about him that made it hard to ignore him.

After eating, several of us stepped aside to chat about how the changes the company had proposed could affect our work. The conversation was professional, at least on the surface.

Because I had begun to notice something else.

Erik wouldn't stop looking at me.

At first I tried to convince myself that it was my impression. Maybe he was simply paying attention to all the delegates, trying to get to know his new team.

But no.

That look repeated itself over and over again.

It was cold. Hard. Direct.

And at the same time, it had something that unsettled me: a kind of controlling confidence that made it hard for me to look away when his eyes met mine.

I didn't know why he looked at me like that.

And abov...