“He arrived in my company in 2005, when my first child was born. Romain is a young project manager [les prénoms ont été changés], about ten years younger than me, who lands on a position that I coveted. Pretty soon, we sympathize. We have the same type of humor and we come from pretty much the same background. We take pleasure in meeting at the office, without becoming close friends. Every fortnight, we see each other around a project that we are developing together. Something quite happy settles between us, we send jokes on WhatsApp, a little silly gifs. It lasted like this for five years.
In 2010, we were transferred to the same department. Professionally, it’s a complicated experience, the project is rotten, but we’re in the same boat, we can pour ourselves out on a daily basis. We don’t see each other outside of work, because I have a busy family life and I’m not a fan of relationships outside of work, but we ritualize a coffee together, every day, at 4 p.m., at the upstairs cafeteria. Little by little, he gets to know my life, because I tell him about it: my wife, our second child, our difficulties. Me, I don’t know anything about him. He does not confide. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable. I don’t ask him about his sexuality, although I’m surprised that such a popular man, especially with women, never talks about his love life.
It was at this time that my partner and I decided to separate. Sometimes, in relationships, we do everything so that the end is very, very painful: here, we took this option. Between two shouting matches, I receive Romain’s little jokes on WhatsApp. I find his attentions touching. The separation drags on, it lasts almost three years. I’m at my wit’s end, I can’t take it anymore.
Go to the end of the story
On a Monday in spring, in 2019, we have our coffee in the convivial space. It’s a large glass room that overlooks a corner of the suburbs on one side with small houses, a stretch of highway and cereal fields, and on the other an interior courtyard. It is furnished with Scandinavian furniture and pink and yellow sofas, in this pure professional style of slightly cold cool.
We are sitting on the pink sofa. I feel him tense, he stares into space. He tells me about a previous relationship with a man, a disappointed love having taken place a few years earlier. And he tells me about a new love, to which he hasn’t said anything yet, but he wants to talk about it now. We’re at work, there’s another group right next door, and I hear him telling me that I’m his new love, that it’s been several years, that he knows that I’m heterosexual, but that after everything is important that I know.
You have 65.48% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.