Love Is Just Around the Corner Read online

she had advanced two courses during her stage at school. She could perfectly have advanced some more courses, because it was extremely easy to her whatever teachers explained at class. She needed bigger intellectual challenges. However, although her teachers knew this and she seemed to have no limits, they understood that, maybe, she did not have enough maturity to have contact with children several years older than her and they worried about how she could fit in those groups. On the other hand, they knew that she would have refused to advance another course if her friend Adrian did not do the same at the same time. It was an essential condition for her, as it happened to him. Knowing that the other one was there gave them security.

  Sophia had always thought Adrian was a genius. He had a special way to see things, a way totally different than the rest. Especially, he was great at everything related with science. It looked like those atoms and particles, which were invisible for others, collected life right in front of him. His knowledge was absolutely intuitive, even though I have to recognize that he spent lot of hours reading about this topic. They loved making experiments together and prove their theories. It was as if time zipped when they were together, because hours seemed to have been only a few minutes.

  Precisely, those interests in common, which were the glue that kept them joined as children, that outstanding intelligence which made them so similar and so different than the rest, all of this was what split them up during what they thought it would be forever.

  Sophia went to do Astronomy to Caltech, the prestigious University located in Pasadena, California. Adrian, by his part, set off to Germany to do Physical at elite University Ruprecht Karl in Heidelberg. Since that moment, they had known nothing about the other one.

  More than fifteen years after they left with tears in their eyes, he was in a taxi on the way to realize one of his dreams of childhood and youth thinking about his friend and companion during his tender years of childhood. She supposed that the only plausible explanation to remember him so intensely in that moment it was because this visit had been planned by them on countless occasions as children. She did not even suspect yet that Adrian had conquered her dreams the night before.

  Her mood that day seemed ambivalent. Firstly, she felt excitement by visiting the particles accelerator, that extraordinary place unique in the world that only a few privileged got access to it and just under previous invitation. Indeed, she had to ask for several favors to accomplish it, due to the topic of the symposium was not related with her specialty. Secondly, that morning she had waken up with a feeling of inner calm, peace and wellbeing, a feeling almost unknown for a person so restless and eager like her. Finally, now a feeling of nostalgia overcame her, which provoked that her eyes were wet and about to overflow. And a women of science like her did not use to let overwhelm herself by her emotions so easily. Despite all, that morning she was immersed into an authentic cocktail of emotions.

  Eventually, the taxi arrived at the surrounding area of the CERN, what was a relief for her agitated mind. Now, she could only focus on what was right in front of her. The appearance from outside it was quite amazing and disconcerting, at the same time. It seemed like a huge army helmet worn by the battle, a spherical body destined to contain and protect one of the greatest jewels of science nowadays. Since that specific moment, she understood that her mind had been reprogrammed in order not to miss a single detail of the experience she was going to live just when she goes through the threshold of the building.

  She got off the taxi and covered astonished the few meters until the entrance. As welcome, the majestic and inspiring sculpture of Gayle Hermick was there, with its impossible bends and its challenge to reason, ostentatiously shimmering the compendium of the evolution and the most impressive scientific milestones among its engravings. A cryptic sculpture for common passerby, a world of revelations for all the scholar of science otherwise.

  She picked up the credentials and the documents with the order of the day for that day, among other things. She was looking forward to coming the moment for a guiding visit that, she presumed, it would be done in small groups. She headed to the auditorium and she waited patiently for the beginning. She did not know anyone there, something very logical if we take into account they her field of study was Astronomy and that was a symposium destined for theoretical physicist and it would be about the latest advances in different current theories. However, she did not mind. On the one hand, it was an issue which had always captivated her very much and she tried to keep updated through the frequent reading of magazines specialized on that field. Nonetheless, despite her interest and tendency toward the complex and challenging Physics, she had decided to devote her researching career to another field which totally fulfilled her and, after all, it was also directly related with the search of the origin of the Universe and its explanation.

  The two first lectures seemed to her to pass by very quickly and the moment for a break and having a coffee came. Sophia had such capacity of concentration that she had not even noticed the time that it was, so that time for a break fell above her almost without expecting it. The attendants had half an hour until the session restarted. This was more than enough time to go to the bathroom and have a cup of tea. Suddenly, something in the next room caught her eye powerfully.

  CAPÍTULO 3: COLLISION

  What the hell was what was happening that day? She supposed her eyes were cheating her. It had been too much time. We all changed a lot over the years, so much on some occasions, that we can scarcely recognize ourselves in the images of our childhood that the photographs give us back. Instinctively, her eyes had headed to a stranger. It was a quite handsome man around thirty years old and with dark hair. He wore black paste glasses and a goatee beard perfectly delineated. She could barely understand what was what had truly drawn her attention to him, until their eyes met. The vivacity that those eyes with a brown iris gave off unexpectedly made her travel back to her childhood and all the precious and unforgettable moments lived with Adrian. But, how was it possible? Was that what normal people called destiny or what kind of game was that? She had no doubt at all. It was him, sure, despite of the only thing that looked like the same at him were those eyes. Adrian had always been a quite gawky and small boy. However, what she was watching it was something quite different. How could that skinny and ungainly boy have become the attractive scientific who was just in front of her? And suddenly, almost like in an intuitive way and without any explanation, she understood she had dreamed of him the night before.

  - Oh, my goodness! I can’t believe what my eyes are seeing! - Adrian said while he was getting closer to her -. I thought my glasses were steamed or I was having a hallucination or something like that. At least, that’d have had some kind of more logic explanation. I can’t believe this is you. Come here and hug me.

  They both merged into a hug that had been postponed at length and it was plenty of truly love and friendship. Sophia thought she was about to cry because of so moved she felt to see him there, after so long years without knowing anything of him.

  - Sophia you look stunning! If I didn’t have a girlfriend, I think I’d try to flirt with you right now - he kept saying with a naughty smile.

  - I see you’re still the same chatty and flattering you used to be, but otherwise you don’t look like the same boy I said goodbye so long ago.

  - Well, I hope that when you say that I do not look anything like when I was a teenager it's a compliment and you think that change has been for the better. At least I got rid of the pimples - he continued, smiling -. Well, tell me. How are you doing? Where are you? What about your life? What is your job? Who have you come with? Tell me everything.

  - The questions one at a time, don’t you think? I can hardly remember which was the first - said Sofia with a kind gesture.

  - Yes of course. You're right. I just cannot believe you're here. I am so excited to see you. We have to go and have a coffee quietly, but with the program today will be impossible. Maybe we can have dinner tog
ether, if you have no other plans.

  - Sounds like a great idea to me. Besides, I've come alone and I do not know anyone, so I'd appreciate some company.

  - That is solved, now I introduce you to my colleagues and you sit down with us.

  And as Adrian had told her, he introduced him to his colleagues and spent the rest of the day with them. Almost as though it was a tacit agreement, they did not talk about anything personal during the day. Probably because the two of them internally understood that they would like to talk about everything that had happened to them in those last fifteen years. They had too many things to tell and very little time to do it.

  When it came time to visit the particle accelerator, they shared the same nerves and excitement. They exchanged glances on numerous occasions, and in each and every one of them, they saw in the other the child he or she had been. How many times had they talked about it? How many times had they searched for information on the internet and in the encyclopedias about the Sancta Sanctorum of scientists? And so, without even realizing it, they enjoyed the shared experience of a dream that materializes and becomes reality.

  At the end of